Canterbury Auction Galleries

For a Communist tyrant, Joseph Stalin remains remarkably popular in the capitalist world of UK auctions – the latest evidence provided by a rare cast bronze death mask offered at Canterbury Auction Galleries (24% buyer’s premium).

Putting a third major collection of highly specialist and highly priced material onto the market within little over three years might seem to be asking too much of a limited number of wealthy enthusiasts.

Not, perhaps, the face modern eyes would immediately think of captivating an emperor, but this porcelain plaque portrait of Napoleon’s first wife, Josephine, was one of a number of major attractions at Canterbury Auction Galleries’ (24% buyer’s premium) Spring Sale.

The Colt Clavier collection of historical keyboard instruments will be offered on June 7 in a sale held by Canterbury Auction Galleries in association with London specialist Piano Auctions.

A rare Western Zhou bronze, taken when the Summer Palace was sacked by British troops in 1860, sold for £410,000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium) at the Canterbury Auction Galleries.

An exceptionally rare Western Zhou bronze, taken when the Summer Palace was sacked by British troops in 1860, has been discovered in a house in a Kent seaside town.

With most English furniture still underperforming at auction, it is French 19th century cabinetmaking that is providing the soundest base of furniture sales in England.

Commonly known as a What The Butler Saw machine, a late 19th-early 20th century Mutoscope was the most alluring of a consignment of a collection of amusement arcade machines offered at Canterbury Auction Galleries (20% buyer’s premium).

A portrait thought to depict one of the most notorious characters of the Jacobean age drew strong bidding in Canterbury.

The Canterbury Auction Galleries included this George IV silver vinaigrette by John Lawrence & Co, Birmingham, decorated with a view of St Peter’s Church, Brighton. It sold to an Australian internet bidder for £2300.

A near-monochrome watercolour by the Australian artist and stage designer Loudon Sainthill (1918-69) sold for five times its top estimate at Canterbury Auction Galleries (20% buyer’s premium) on October 3-4.

One of the earliest examples of the lucrative tartan tourism, which dates back to George IV’s visit to Edinburgh in 1822 and was turbo-charged by Queen Victoria’s love of the Highlands, were the sycamore boxes and trinkets made in small factories in the little Ayrshire town of Mauchline.

Exactly a week before Harry Rutherford’s ‘Camden Town’ painting sold in London (see separate Art Market story this edition), a small undated sketch, Female Nude, by his prolific mentor and tutor Walter Sickert (1860-1942) cropped up in Kent.