Bonhams

ONE of the highlights of Bonhams & Langlois' (15% buyer's premium) March 26 Channel Islands theme sale was a collection of uniforms and associated ephemera and family history relating to three senior members of the Jersey Militia.

COYS, the Kensington-based auctioneers of veteran, vintage and classic cars, have formed a new collectors department around two former members of the Bonhams team.

Back on March 18, Bonhams (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) held a sale devoted entirely to Export Arts of the China Trade in their Bond Street rooms. Running to 277 lots, it comprised material from both China and Japan, the bulk of it ceramics but also featuring metalwares, ivories, furniture, paintings and other works of art.

Topping the sale of fine watches held at Bonhams’ Bond Street (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) rooms on April 15, was this 18th century gold pair cased verge watch. This had a signed and numbered movement (562) by Daniel Delander, who was free of the Clockmakers Company in 1699, and was contained in plain gold cases marked for London, 1716.

Two early watercolour drawings of rabbits in snowy settings were offered as part of a Bonhams sale of April 1. That seen right shows one rabbit making a snowball while another leans on a fence, while in the illustration reproduced below right, the two rabbits are building a snowman.

The death of Walter Moorcroft last year and the strong prices at Sotheby’s recent dispersal of the Wade collection have reinforced the popularity of this market, especially for the earlier Macintyre wares. A small collection at Bonham’s sale in Bury St Edmunds yielded the following results.

Coming up in ....Hendon: The Bowers archive, depicting some of the most historic and important monochrome images of the motoring industry dating from the early part of the 20th century to the 1950s, will be included in Bonhams’ sale of Collectors’ Motor Cars, Cycles, Automobilia, Toys & Models at the RAF Museum, Hendon on April 28.

The Oriental glazes of the Midlands Arts and Crafts pottery known as Ruskinware have proved remarkably popular in the past year, as the disposal of the Wade collection at Sotheby’s and the Birkett Collection at Bonhams took prices in this market to unprecedented levels.

The vessel in the foreground of the photograph reproduced right, which at first glance appears to have been deliberately rolled over onto its side, or careened, but which may of course be a special craft, looks uncannily like a vast stranded fish. It is seen here in one of 129 albumen prints of photographs by Felice Beato that sold at £26,000 to Shapero in a Bonhams sale of March 11.

PICTURES of dogs are big business as Bonhams’ & Doyle’s sale of Dogs in Art in New York on February 11 highlighted. And an artist frequently featured in these New York sales brought James Adam (15% buyer’s premium) of Dublin success on March 12.

The now-defunct firm of Hedges & Butler (est.1667) was one of the oldest wine merchants in England, originally based by the Thames on a site now occupied by Charing Cross Station. The name of the company has now disappeared, but what its own publicity described as “our very interesting collection of old Viniana” provided an eye-catching highlight for Bonhams’ (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) otherwise fairly routine mixed sale of art and antiques in Knowle.

PRIVATE pictures with reasonable estimates proved a recipe for success at Bonhams (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on February 3 where 75 of the 101 lots found buyers at the £823,130 sale.

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.