Auctions

SMALL, original and honest – these classic qualities took a 2ft 5in x 2ft 6 1/2in (74x 77cm) George I walnut chest to the top of the sales chart at Aldridges’ (15% buyer's premium) 344-lot May 25 sale where it took £3100.

ENORMOUS pre-sale speculation surrounded the 25-lot single-owner antiquities sale that came under the hammer at Bonhams Bond Street (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) on July 14, not least because the vendor was strongly rumoured in the trade to be the world’s most prolific collector, Sheikh Saud of Qatar.

“WHEN Mr Woods came into our saleroom and invited us to see his collection,” said Anderson & Garland’s collectables specialist John Anderson, “we just couldn’t believe that such a unique selection of memorabilia could have been sitting in a house only a dozen miles from our premises.”

IT was, perhaps, a telling sign of the current shortage of high-quality, market-fresh Old Master paintings in the salerooms that Bonhams (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) July 7 Old Master Paintings sale should be headed by this hitherto unrecorded John Constable (1776-1837) plein air oil on canvas sketch, right, of the artist’s home village, East Bergholt.

EVERY country house sale should have at least one sleeper and at Christie's (19.5/12% buyer's premium) Chirk Castle sale this honour went to a sandstone grave slab.

BASED in Stoke-on-Trent, auctioneers Louis Taylor (buyer’s premium 12.5 per cent) are better known for their ceramics than their pictures but their quarterly Fine sale held from June 14-16 was led by this Dorothea Sharp oil on canvas, right, Children with a Dog on a Summer’s Day.

THE ups and, more depressingly, the downs of the market this year make the results of a steady day’s selling of material put together by Nigel Papworth at Diamond Mills’ (11.75% buyer's premium) Felixstowe rooms at the end of June look positively encouraging.

THE servants’ quarters, very much a part of the history of any great house, are always hugely popular with visitors and the National Trust was keen to buy items at Christie’s (19.5/12% buyer's premium) Chirk Castle sale on June 21 which represented life below stairs.

SELECTIVE bidding at Hobbs Parker's (10% buyer's premium) 704-lot June 10 outing focused on the better-quality entries such as an Art Nouveau belt buckle by Liberty & Co., which fetched £400, and two Mappin & Webb silver photograph frames dating to 1917 and 1916 which took a respectable £400.

INTERNET enquiries do not always translate into bids but Golding Young (15% buyer's premium) received enquiries from as far afield as India, America and Australia for pieces among the 1100 lots illustrated on their website for their May 5 sale.

ROUNDING off a sale of Western Manuscripts and Miniatures at Sotheby’s on June 22 was what, at first glance, must have seemed an unusual inclusion in a manuscript sale – a 13 1/2in (35cm) high carved ivory plaque featuring a figure of a Roman Consul.

ROUNDING off the European furniture, carpets and works of art sale at Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) on June 15 was a 78-lot collection of hall stands, mostly made in cast iron.

DECADES before Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde sheep and the 1990s explosion of Britart, London was swinging to the rhythm of Pop Art’s movers and shakers. Forty years have now passed since the height of this international movement prompting Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) to host the first of what they hope will become an annual Pop Art themed sale on June 30.

THIS elaborate late 19th century boulle longcase is typical of the revivalist furnishings that were the stock-in-trade of the Acton-based television and film-props company Period Props and Lighting that closed earlier this year after 30 years in the business. Their inventory was enormous and will provide Rupert Toovey & Co’s (15% buyer’s premium) rooms at Spring Gardens, Washington with a series of sales. The first tranche was offered on June 15.

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.

AS all but the very top end of the furniture market continues to stagnate, Andrew Hartley (10% buyer's premium) can take some solace in the solid private client base it has built up for its regular consignments of Royal Worcester porcelain.

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.

LEOMINSTER auctioneer Brightwells will offer the lifetime collection of recorded sound enthusiast Don Watson, in a single vendor sale on July 29.

RIGHT: despite the occasionally negative press the antiques trade has received in recent weeks a media circus arrived at Sotheby’s on July 7 to watch the Bond Street auctioneers sell Young Woman Seated at the Virginals, a newly-acknowledged picture by Johannes Vermeer (1632-75).

IN the eyes of many of today’s collectors, it is the realist interiors, which range from old farm buildings to grand rooms, and the figure subjects of William Henry Hunt (1790-1864), which are most desirable, a fact highlighted by the artist’s sale results.