Auctions

A Dada still life collage by Francis Picabia that came with an equally illustrious trail of previous owners headed the modern art sale at CalmelsCohen (20.33-11.96% buyer’s premium) on December 6.

A prayerbook presented by Louis XV to Maria Leczinska as a wedding present in 1725 sold at Sotheby’s (23.92/14.35% buyer’s premium) for €280,000 (£200,000) on December 2, during an otherwise disappointing 194-lot royal provenance sale that brought €1.26m (£900,000) and was 72 per cent sold by value, but just 56 per cent by lot.

The Orient played a significant part in Tennants’ (Buyers premium 15%) success in the Yorkshire Dales.

WHEN the first part of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha was published in Madrid in 1605, it proved an immediate success, but as the original publisher, Francisco de Robles, had failed to register copyright outside his native Castile, others were quick to jump on the Cervantes bandwagon.

NEVER forget there is another armory in Manhattan, the one downtown at Lexington Avenue at 26th Street, and that one hosts some splendid shows throughout the year, starting in 2005 with the appropriately named Antiques at the Armory from January 21 to 23.

SOUTH London based Paola-Francia Gardner who operates as P&A Antiques, has been a pioneer of the now booming field of vintage fashion and she holds her first fair of the year this Sunday, January 16.

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.

Richardson & Smith, Whitby, November 18 Buyer’s premium: 12.5 per cent Furniture produced the top lots in this routine 717-lot North Yorkshire auction, topped by an oak dresser and a plate rack with a shaped crest over four tiers.

ANDREW McIntosh Patrick, director of The Fine Art Society, is to sell his celebrated collection of metalwork by the Victorian industrial designer Christopher Dresser. Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull will conduct the projected £400,000 sale on April 19.

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.

STROHMENGER’s stylish Art Deco pianos are self-evidently pieces with huge crossover appeal. Being chic furnishings as well as useful musical instruments, they tend to give strong performances in the saleroom when they appear.

A December 7 sale of incunabula conducted by Christie’s South Kensington saw a collector’s bid of £10,000 on a first edition of Johannes Nider’s Consolatorium..., a discussion of conscience that is based in large part on the teachings of St. Augustine, Gregory the Great and other medieval writers.

A more academic ivory carving than anything at Kidson-Trigg’s sale was this unsigned but fine quality 6 3/4in (17.5cm) portrait bust, right, offered at the Banbury rooms of Holloways (15% buyer’s premium) on November 30.

Wotton Auction Rooms Wotton-under-Edge October 19-20 Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent THIS wide-ranging, 1600-lot Gloucestershire sale was helped by a large number of probate estates which furnished proceedings with the type of reasonably estimated material sought after by dealers and collectors alike.

OVER half of ArtCurial’s sale on December 8 was devoted to the Paris Design firm XO, founded in 1985.

HIGHLIGHT of the 1440-lot Asian section of Nagel’s (33% buyer’s premium) mammoth November sale series was this rare 11in (28cm) high cylindrical cloisonné enamel vase of c.1900 by the highly regarded Namikawa Yasuyuki decorated with a striking design of bamboo and a snail on a black ground.

The continuing strength of the privately-fuelled market for unusual or quality toys in good condition saw Wallis & Wallis of Lewes boast healthy selling rates by volume in their specialist November and October toy sales.

Peter Wilson, Nantwich November 17-18 Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent ALTHOUGH bidding was selective at this Cheshire sale, with only around 65 per cent of the 780 lots finding buyers, there was healthy competition for collectable ceramics such as a Royal Copenhagen set of ten colourful figures of children dressed in traditional Dutch costume by Carl Martin Hansen (1877-1941).

ON November 12 Christie’s (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) sold a European private collection of Pre-Columbian works of art amassed between the late 1960s and 1980. The market responded enthusiastically to fresh material of high quality with distinguished provenances. Although the lottage rate was only 73 per cent, by value, the sale came in at 93 per cent, a premium-inclusive total of $3.23m (£1.75m).

“In 20 years I have never seen anything quite like it,” says auctioneer Richard Bromell of Sherborne’s Charterhouse. “It has a central dial for Greenwich which is surrounded by 11 smaller dials telling the time in the various countries. Having originally been presented to a Victorian relative [of the vendors] who built railways for a living, he would have been able to keep track of time with all his business interests.”