Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood

Rare examples of early English porcelain are still capable of remarkable sums.

The sale at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (plus 21% buyer’s premium) on January 29 – an event dominated by the multi-estimate performance of a Qianlong mark vase in the Ming taste sold at £460,000 (see ATG No 2378) – also included a hardwood (probably olivewood), bone and mother-of-pearl inlaid model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Works by two artists who made the ocean their muse were the focus of a small collection at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium) on January 29.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Alongside living with bushmen in Africa, visiting 33 native tribes in Brazil and riding the length of the Great Wall of China, the Cornish-based explorer Robin Hanbury-Tenison (b.1936) also found time to pursue another passion – one much closer to home.

At a time when catering for niche interests is a profitable path for auctioneers, recent sales in Scotland, Ireland and England have shown that the furniture market can still come to life – provided it meets three criteria.

A collection of fashion books and plates offered as part of an Exeter sale on September 12 was led at £1050 by an 1831, second edition of John Jackson’s The Improved Tailor’s Aera.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Complete with 48 cards and rules sheet, and still in its original, if slightly fragile case with printed label, Panko, or Votes for Women… is a sort of ‘Rummy’- inspired card game pitching Suffragists against Anti-Suffragists.

It’s a rare sale these days at which an English furniture standard challenges quality Chinese pieces for price, but the top end of the trade certainly rated a 6ft 3in (1.9m) William and Mary walnut and featherbanded bureau cabinet offered by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

A very suitable buyer emerged for an 19th century picture of The Artists Rifles by John Evan Hodgson (1831-95) offered in Exeter.

One of just 100 copies of a scarce, privately published edition of poems called Salvo for Russia, produced in 1942 in aid of the ‘Comforts Fund for Women and Children of Russia’, was offered in a recent West Country sale.

At some point in its life, an early photographically illustrated work on the art of wood turning offered in a recent Exeter sale had been converted for use as a postcard album, but it still sold for a four-times estimate £4300.

Collecting traditional English ceramics is still a popular pursuit on both sides of the Atlantic – but one where purchases are always tailored to fit the purse strings of the core collecting audience.