Dreweatts

“EVERY auction house’s dream” is how Rupert Powell, managing director of Bloomsbury Auctions, described the discovery of a Shakespeare First Folio that will provide a fitting centrepiece for the company’s 500th sale on Thursday October 7.

FOLLOWING the Antiques Trade Gazette’s coverage of the sale of a micromosaic table signed by Michelangelo Barberi for £250,000 at Dreweatt Neate’s Donnington Priory rooms in January – still the highest price achieved for an item of furniture in a UK saleroom so far this year – the Newbury firm received a call from a gentleman in Scotland.

IT was a third edition of 1799, slightly foxed and browned and lacking the half titles, but the copy of George Walker’s novel The Vagabond seen in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of August 19 was in a contemporary calf gilt binding and it sold at £400 (C.R. Johnson).

SOLD for £2200 (C.R. Johnson) at Bloomsbury Auctions on August 19 was a Batchelor’s Directory.., a work. of 1694, which goes on to describe itself as ...a treatise on the excellence of marriage; of its necessity, and the means to live happy in it: together with an apology for the women against the calumnies of the men. Bound in contemporary red morocco gilt, this first edition was catalogued as “a dedication copy from the author”, but to whom, we are not told.

INSCRIBED in both volumes “with the author’s love” to an Edith Barnes, presentation firsts of Lewis Carroll’s over-long children’s story Sylvie and Bruno of 1889 and its continuation or conclusion of 1893, the original red cloth bindings now uniformly faded to the spines, dampstained to the front of Vol. II and showing repairs to the spine ends of the first volume, was sold for £1400 in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of July 15.

THE Rates of Merchandise, that is to say, Subsidy of Tonnage, ...Poundage and ...Woollen Clothes, or Old-Drapery, as they are Rated and Agreed on by the Commons House of Parliament..., a 1660 copy in rebacked contemporary calf of the book of rates required by the passing of that year’s Act of Tonnage and Poundage, was sold for £1000 in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of June 17.

EARLIER this year Bloomsbury Book Auctions moved to Mayfair’s Maddox Street and changed their name to the all-embracing Bloomsbury Auctions (17.5/10% buyer’s premium).

COLLECTING fashions come and go, but the redoubtable Marcel Dyf (1899-1995) never seems to be short of admirers. This signed 23 1/4in x 2ft 4in (59 x 71cm) canvas, right, La Courbe de la Rivière, was the lone picture highlight of Dreweatt Neate’s (15% buyer’s premium) August 24 sale in Bristol when it sold to the London trade at £7600 against an estimate of £4000-6000.

THE London coin auction is indeed evolving. We have the announcement by Stephen Fenton of the birth of St James’s Auctions. Their first sale is scheduled for Wednesday October 13 at the De Vere Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street. It seems that this promises to be a very prestigious sale.

THESE two half-length images of women, right, could hardly be more different in date or technique, but their prices proved as uncannily similar as their poses when they came under the hammer at recent fine art auctions.

REINFORCED at the spine with linen some time ago, the sale catalogue seen right was issued in 1836 by a Mr Pigott for a sale of farming stock, garden and other seeds, plus household furniture, held at Normandy Farm, near Ash in Surrey – the home of “the late William Cobbett, Esq. MP”, and of course author of Rural Rides. In a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of June 17, it was sold for £400 (C.R. Johnson).

THE British Antiques and Collectables Award winners have been announced for 2004, making Dreweatt Neate the first firm to win an auction house award twice.

THE very fine 1950 first edition copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe seen right, with just a few nicks to the jacket skilfully repaired, was sold for £6000 to a collector by Bloomsbury Auctions on June 17, but at Sotheby’s on July 8, a complete set of the seven books that make up C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia was left unsold on an estimate of £5000-7000.

ILLUSTRATED right is a very good copy of the 1885 first edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s splendid A Child’s Garden of Verses that made £1200 (Bauman Rare Books) as part of the Alan Fortunoff library at Bloomsbury Auctions on June 4.

HARRY Potter prices are not quite as strong as they once were, but the fine “unread” copy of the 1997 first of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone seen right was sold on June 17 for £11,000 at Bloomsbury Auctions, who had it hopefully estimated it at £15,000-20,000.

FOR 71 of his 84 years Harry Davis (1885-1969) worked as a decorator at the Royal Worcester factory, ultimately rising to the post of foreman painter. He painted a wide variety of subjects, but is best known for his sheep-decorated landscapes, all produced in the first quarter of the 20th century.

SCIENCE books in a June 24 sale held by Bloomsbury Auctions included a 1647, Danzig first of Hevelius’ Selenographia, the first lunar atlas, illustrated with a portrait and 111 plates (one with volvelle), mostly engraved by the author from drawings that he made in the observatory that he had equipped with instruments he had built himself.

ON June 4, as part of the Fortunoff library, Bloomsbury Auctions sold a 1936 first of John Maynard Keynes’ enormously infleunetial General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money for £1700 (Bauman).

“ONE has to get sellers to be realistic and then things will sell,” commented Clive Stewart-Lockhart in the wake of the Donnington Priory sale conducted by Dreweatt Neate (15% buyer’s premium) on May 26.

THE expansion of Bloomsbury Auctions continues apace with the announcement that they are moving into the chess and games market.