Bonhams

BY IVAN MACQUISTENROBERT Brooks has been nailing his colours to the mast in more ways than one in the past week.

LVMH have sold their 49.9 per cent shareholding in auction house Bonhams 1793 back to Bonhams.

IT was a family occasion on Friday June 9 at Bonhams when chairman Robert Brooks invited his father Bill to unveil a plaque for the lecture theatre in their Bond Street HQ in front of a small gathering of family members and senior staff from the auction house.

ENGLISH POTTERY SALESTHE products of the Staffordshire potteries from blue-printed tablewares to cottage chimney ornaments and Toby jugs to ironstone services, were the subject of a 356-lot sale at Bonhams’ Knightsbridge (20/12% buyer’s premium) back on May 11.

PERHAPS the rarest of all Beswick’s ouput is the Spirit of Whitfield.

Classic English furniture continues to bring good prices at auction providing the quality is there – and this Regency sofa table, right, certainly filled that requirement when it was offered at the March 3 sale in Cornwall held by Bonhams Par (17.5% buyer’s premium).

THE piece with star billing at Bonhams’ April 21 Antiquities auction was the dramatic white marble group, shown here, even meriting its own separate hardback catalogue.

Bonhams Bond StreetCLASSICAL sculpture also dominated Bonhams wide-ranging mixed-owner sale on April 21. Led by the Hever nymph and satyr, discussed on page 13, Roman marbles accounted for eight of the ten highest prices.

OUT of the ashes of Glendinings, Bonhams (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) have established a series of general sales. The last occurred on April 5. John Millensted, who has worked at Glendinings for some years, has been promoted to head of the numismatic department.

In 2001 international connoisseurial interest and commercial hype accompanied a major exhibition and accompanying book on the Belgian ceramicist Charles Catteau (1880-1966). There are signs that the market is now beginning to mature – minor Boch Frères works by Catteau were very soft at Bonhams in London on March 1 – but Brussels auctioneers Horta were able to offer a major signed studio piece by the artist on March 21-22.

If a silhouette was going to set a new auction record then this elaborately embellished, highly decorative and grandiose royal subject was surely a good candidate. When it sold for £9500 (plus 20 per cent premium) at Bonhams on February 22, it beat the auctioneers’ own previous auction high of £8000 set last year by a Torond conversation piece.

Pot Lids and Stevengraphs were two areas of the market put to the test last month.

Bonhams are expanding their existing New York presence by taking gallery space at the Fuller Building, 595 Madison Ave. The new space will enable Bonhams to hold regular sales in New York beginning in the summer.

Two of the strongest performances in the December ceramics sales came from the glass sections offered at Bonhams Bond Street on December 8 and at Sotheby’s Olympia two weeks later.

ATG have an update on the round-up of provincial sale totals for 2004 published in issue 1672, January 15.

IN CONTRAST to Sotheby’s and Christie’s, who usually offer Japanese arms and armour in Japanese works of art sales, Bonhams (19.5/10% buyers premium) include theirs as a section in militaria auctions.

PRINTED ephemera, often disregarded detritus, is not generally highly valued material. But should it chance to survive, it can acquire socio-historical and even monetary value.

With TEFAF Maastricht beckoning, it was hardly surprising that Dutch and Flemish painting should capture most of major prices at the December round of Old Master paintings sales in London.

FROM January 1, Bonhams will cut the paying out time for UK clients from 35 days to 21. Chairman Robert Brooks aims to cut the payment time further to 14 days and eventually to extend the policy worldwide.

A STUNNING early Ming dynasty dish has equalled the highest price ever paid at auction for a piece of Chinese porcelain.