Auctioneers

THE international Asian art community descended on London from November 4-12 to battle for the best quality Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Southeast Asian material the major houses and dealers could muster during Asian Art in London.

THE market for Contemporary art maintained its seemingly unstoppable momentum in New York last week.

THE Bourne casket, a Restoration needlework casket that failed to sell when offered by Netherhampton Salerooms earlier this year, has been sold by private treaty to the Lancashire Museum Services.

AUCTION revenues have leapt by nearly a half, year on year, for the third quarter of 2004 at Sotheby’s. But increased costs have meant that they have also registered a slightly bigger loss.

NERVES in New York’s art market, just like those in the New York stock market, were settled by the swift resolution of the US presidential election.

IN the competitive world of domestic tablewares, the name of Spode has remained among the very best since production started c.1770.

THE current fashionable status of antiquities and the charm of animal subject matter proved an irresistible combination for collectors last week when Christie’s offered the late Leo Mildenberg’s collection of ancient animals. The two-day dispersal of the German-born collector’s Noah’s ark, in London on October 26 and 27, totalled just over £3m.

BACK in April in Antiques Trade Gazette No 1633, we pictured and discussed an unusual Derby porter mug decorated with industrial scenes of two Mancunian foundries which sold at Bonhams in London for £3800.

SHALL I be mother? At first glance there’s nothing very exciting at all about this Edwardian teapot. Decorated with printed, painted and aerographed flower sprays against a graduated green and yellow ground and highlighted by burnished gilt, it is typical of the cheap and cheerful earthenwares churned out in their thousands in Staffordshire at the turn of the last century.

THE highlight of a Gerald and Sheila Goldberg collection of predominately Irish decorative arts sold by Mealy’s in Douglas, Cork earlier this month was this finely-preserved Aubusson tapestry, right, designed by Louis le Brocquy (b.1916).

AN early 20th century Tiffany Favrile ten-light lamp was an unusual consignment for a provincial auction house. The market for Tiffany is largely based in America and even the major London rooms tend to sell their best consignments through their New York rooms. However, the family of the late Peter Grant, former manager of the legendary rock group Led Zeppelin, live locally and put his lamp into Dreweatt Neate Tunbridge Wells Saleroom's (15% buyer's premium) September 3 sale.

THERE are few more commercial subjects than children. Accordingly, it was no surprise that this near life-size Italian marble group of two children playing on a balcony (pictured right) by Donato Barcaglia, dating from the late 19th century stole the limelight at Christie’s King Street (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) 19th century furniture, sculpture, works of art and ceramics sale on September 30.

TWO or three times a year Bonhams (19.5/10% buyer's premium) offer a selection of modern pieces in their monthly Knightsbridge silver and objects of vertu sales. Undoubtedly a growth area of the market, works by major names such as Stuart Devlin, Gerald Benney and Christopher Lawrence routinely feature amongst the top ten lots.

JACK Vettriano (b.1951) is not an artist normally associated with the North East of England, but one of the lesser known facts about Britain’s Most Popular Artist is that one of his first one-man exhibitions, if not the first, was held at the Corrymella Scott Gallery in Jesmond, an upmarket suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1992.

AT 10.41 on the morning of August 25, 1875, to the sounds of Rule Britannia, Captain Matthew Webb emerged from the cold and choppy waters of the Channel. It had taken him 21 hours and 41 minutes. He had covered close to 40 miles. But he had become the first man to swim from English to French soil.

DUKE'S of Dorchester are opening a new auction room to allow them to improve their handling for house clearance and deceased estates among other services.

A COUPLE of exotic sleepers swelled the tally at Lays Auctions (15% buyer's premium) September 23-24 sale which also boasted healthy prices for more home-grown fare such as Troika and Newlyn copper.

ATTRACTING dealers from both sides of the Border to McTear's (15% buyer's premium) September 24 sale was a Regency figured maple and parcel gilt breakfast table.

ESTIMATED at £500-600 in a Keys of Aylsham sale of September 24 but very much the lot that attracted most interest – and a final bid of £10,200 – was the New Testament seen right.

THE Mira Jacob Collection sale at Bailly-Pommery-Voutier & Sotheby's (23.92 - 14.35% buyer's premium) included a smattering of drawings and watercolours by artists outside the dealer’s sphere of influence – from a small Picasso ink sketch of a Glass and Jar, bought in at €44,000, to a Degas pencil portrait of Thérèse Degas, 11 x 8 1/2in (28 x 22cm), which sold at a quadruple-estimate €77,000 (£52,400).