Bonhams

IF THERE is one objet d’art that best characterises the antiques market at present it is the curate’s egg – good in parts, but bad overall. The flawed ovum’s brighter regions encompass most low-value collectables – ceramics included.

To date this year Bonhams (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) have held five sales of furniture and carpets. These weekly sales are making a return to their Knightsbridge rooms for the first time in around 20 years after a recent peripatetic period of moving from Chelsea – their long time abode – to Bayswater and briefly back to Chelsea again.

It’s QUESTIONABLE how much influence a piece of furniture could have upon the writer using it, but certainly when the writer in question is Graham Greene, a writer of that fame can certainly influence the fate of a piece of furniture.

Twenty one lots in Bonhams’ marine sale on January 22 came from the collection of the late John Foster, celebrated yachtsman and yachting enthusiast. The bulk of these were paintings but there were also three non-pictorial entries: a pair of carved wooden Prince of Wales feathers from Edward VII’s yacht Osborne, which fetched £1100, and the two silver racing trophies pictured here, which represented significant mementoes of racing history from both sides of the Atlantic.

AS Christie’s and Bonhams followed Sotheby’s in announcing new commission structures last week, Bonhams emerged with the most attractive terms for buyers and added a new incentive for sellers at their Bond Street rooms.

JUST as Phillips announce their cutbacks, Bonhams have unveiled annual sales for 2002 of $304m. This announcement completes Bonhams’ first full year of trading after the November 2001 merger in which they combined with the UK interests of Phillips Son and Neale.

Sleepers are something of an endangered species at UK picture sales, but this small 6 by 5in (15.5 x 12.5cm) oil on board still life, right, by the Danish/American painter Emil Carlsen (1853-1932) certainly made the room sit up when it sold to a US dealer on the telephone at £17,500 against an estimate of just £1000-1500 at the Atheneum Sale in Bury St. Edmunds held by Bonhams’ (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on December 17.

LARGE quantities of antique pewter are rarely seen at auction these days but even so, the supply of ordinary material is hardly met with rampant demand. As such, prices were kept down for the majority of the 122 pewter lots that Bonhams had impressively gathered for their Chester sale on 17 January.

A watercolour drawing by Renoir and inscribed by Emile Zola has been discovered by Bonhams in the vault of London diamond merchants I. Hennig & Co. The c.1877 drawing had been lost for almost 20 years and is thought to be one of the few recorded works by Renoir intended for book illustration.

Seen here are two lots from the Ronald A. Cohen collection of Books, Prints and Objects illustrative of the History of Dentistry and Teeth, a 674-lot sale held by Bonhams on December 10.

In an Old Master week when major-name masterworks were in short supply, the appearance of two of only four known drawings by El Greco (1541-1614) at Bonhams’ (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) December 9 Old Master Drawings sale understandably attracted plenty of attention.

Ceramics: November/December saw a whole slew of ceramics sales take place in the London rooms either devoted entirely to British or to Continental material or a mix of the two. One of the last to take place was Bonhams’ indigenous selection offered in their Bond Street rooms on December 11.

BONHAMS have appointed Jon Baddeley, pictured right, to the new role of group head of the Collectors’ department with effect from Monday, February 3.

Unsigned Arts & Crafts metalwork has lately been getting the sort of high prices normally reserved for attributable material and this copper-mounted mirror, right, was no exception – the sleeper of Bonhams’ (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) sale of Decorative Arts at Glasgow School of Arts on November 28.

BONHAMS will call their newly merged American company Bonhams and Butterfields from January 1 and are sending out group managing director Malcolm Barber from London to San Francisco to run it.

WHILE the Irish picture market continues to boom, the Scottish market showed serious jitters at Bonhams Edinburgh (17.5% buyer’s premium) on the evening of December 5.

A combination of vendors reluctant to consign the best quality goods and cautious bidding from the trade created a fairly low-key atmosphere at London’s traditional pre-Christmas round of Old Master picture sales.

Pint-sized dealers might be interested in getting hold of this immaculate little suit in black wool and cream cotton, measuring just 2ft 1in (63cm) from collar to trouser bottom, which is being offered by Bonhams in Knowle on December 11.

The table pictured right was very much the star entry in a 230-lot sale of English and Continental furniture and works of art held at Bonhams (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) Bond Street rooms on November 26. It singled handedly accounted for a third of the entire £787,620 auction total when it made £260,000. Nothing else came near this in price, the next most expensive entry being a £19,000 Louis XV period marquetry commode.

Over the last year or so there have been some worryingly disappointing results at London and New York auctions of 19th century British and Continental pictures. Bidding in London at Bonhams’ (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) November 19 sale of 19th Century Paintings, however, exhibited some much-welcomed signs of renewed solidity, with 64 per cent of the 182 lots finding buyers.