Bellmans

Estimated at £8000-12,000, this rare pair of Meissen figures of red squirrels, c.1750, modelled by J.J.Kändler, took £45,000 at Bellmans auctions of Wisborough Green, near Billingshurst.

Auctioneers Bellmans will include a pair of Meissen squirrels, modelled by J.J.Kändler and dated to c.1750 in their forthcoming sale.

This previously unrecorded late work by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-97), ‘Landscape with Rainbow’, sold for £125,000 at Bellmans in Wisborough Green, West Sussex.

The highlight of Bellmans’ latest three-day sale at Wisborough Green, West Sussex was an impressive set of three George II tortoiseshell and silver tea caddies in a fitted silver-mounted tortoiseshell case.

STUDENTS from West Dean College near Chichester will offer their work at auction to raise funds to supplement the college’s bursary and scholarship schemes.

THIS Russian icon depicting St George slaying the dragon generated a lively competition when offered on the third day of Bellmans' sale in Wisborough Green, West Sussex.

West Sussex-based auctioneer Bellmans are the latest UK saleroom to open an office in Central London.

THE unexpected success of the pair of library chairs discussed above led the way at the Wisborough Green saleroom, but there was keen action, mainly in the three-figure range, across the three days when 1800 lots were offered.

FIRST edition copies of John Martyn’s translations of Virgil’s Georgicks (1741) and Bucolicks (1749), both illustrated with coloured plates and maps and bound in contemporary calf, made £500 in a September 17 sale held by John Bellman of Billingshurst.

BOUND in half calf gilt and marbled boards, the three-vol., 1813 second edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that sold for £4600 in a May 21 sale held by John Bellman of Billingshurst bore the pencil initials H.D. for Horace Darwin (Charles Darwin’s son) and his bookplates were to be found in a copy of the 1818, four-vol. first edition of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in a similar but less well-preserved binding that sold at £2500.

Shown right are two highlights from the sale conducted by John Bellman (15% buyer’s premium) of Newpound, Wisborough Green, on February 18.

The doom and gloom experienced in many provincial rooms prior to Christmas was nowhere to be seen in these Sussex rooms, who, despite the snowy conditions, took a respectable hammer total just shy of £170,000.

Once again torrential rain and flooding has wreaked havoc across the country causing disruption to the antiques trade.

UK: OVERTLY Continental pieces of furniture are not the most commercial proposition in the current trading environment (the strength of sterling have limited the overseas presence for many months now), but Bellman’s West Sussex rooms had no difficulty in selling a fine example of Dutch/Flemish cabinetmaking at their April sale.