Auctions

Gone are the days when collectors could afford to ignore anything but the finest quality early 18th century imperial porcelain in mint condition. The burgeoning of interest in this field from Far Eastern collectors has ensured that when such pieces come under the hammer, the prices realised are out of the reach of all but the seriously wealthy.

Christie’s King Street (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) were the only major house not to offer a single-owner sale in addition to their 163-lot mixed owner outing on November 11, but they managed to find buyers for the best quality private entries that sold well.

Dealers and collectors with money in their pockets at the end of Asia week were rewarded with a trip to Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on November 14. The room was full for this 478-lot auction, with mainland Chinese and Far Eastern buyers interested in two conservatively estimated, market-fresh, non-European collections of Chinese calligraphy brushes and archaic jades.

This impressive and highly finished late Queen Anne model of a 40/44 gun 5th rate ship, right, created a huge splash in Christie’s South Kensington’s 554-lot sale of Maritime models and marine paintings on November 19 when it sold for £600,000 (plus 17.5/10% premium), single-handedly providing over a third of the sale’s £1.36m total.

AUSTRALIAN auction group Menzies have merged the art departments at their two leading rooms. With a combined art auction turnover for 2003 expected to exceed $35m, Deutscher-Menzies of Melbourne will now conduct all art sales previously split between them and the Sydney-based Lawson-Menzies.

To mark the last firing of a traditional bottle oven in 1978, the Royal Doulton factory produced a special backstamp to apply to the base of a few otherwise ordinary character jugs.

This unmarked mid-19th century chamber pot was one of the choice lots in the mixed-vendor section of Dreweatt Neate’s recent sale.

IN February 2004 Sotheby’s New Bond Street will mark the centenary of Cecil Beaton’s birth with an exhibition of his most celebrated photographs. Beaton at Large, which runs from February 10 to 20, will complement the National Portrait Gallery’s major retrospective, Cecil Beaton: Portraits, which runs from February 5 to May 3.

Among the highlights of Dreweatt Neate’s mixed discipline sale of November 19 is this late 16th/early 17th century Flanders linen damask banqueting cloth (a detail shown right) recently found by the Newbury auctioneers among a large quantity of table linen in an outbuilding of a country house.

Samuel Watson (1649-1710) is not perhaps as well-known as his contemporaries East, Knibb, Graham or Tompion but he is one of the blue chip names of late 17th century London clockmaking – good enough to enjoy the patronage of both Charles II and Sir Isaac Newton.

Italian Sales: FOR the first time in 10 years, neither Christie’s nor Sotheby’s held an October sale of German and Austrian art. The German economy is currently in far too fragile a state to support a major sale of Expressionist material in London and theme-minded Contemporary and Modern specialists concentrated their attention instead on October’s annual round of 20th Century Italian Art sales.

A quarter of a century ago, Christie’s sold an amazing doll’s house known as Titania’s Palace. This truly palatial mansion, more miniature museum than dolls’ house, was designed by Sir Nevile Wilkinson over 15 years from 1907-22, when it was opened by Queen Mary. Initially intended for Sir Nevile’s daughter, as the house and project grew it turned into a fund-raising publicity exercise for children’s charities.

Just as Concorde was an Anglo-French initiative, so the entente cordiale continues with its dismantling. Two auctioneers on either side of the Channel: Christie’s in Paris and Bonhams in London, are holding Concorde souvenir auctions devoted to technical elements and mementoes from the iconic aircraft. In both cases the sales will benefit the respective airlines’ chosen charities.

WITHDRAWN from sale at the eleventh hour, a recently-discovered portfolio of late 18th century topographical watercolours of Canada have been sold by private treaty to Library and Archives Canada and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.

Basel fair shows its mettle: NOW established as a notable international fixture this year’s Cultura, to be held in Basel, Switzerland from November 14 to 19, is a month later and a day shorter than in the past, and looking at the exhibitor list of 55 dealers it looks stronger than ever.

WITH vendors finding greater confidence (and, in some cases, greater incentives) to offer blue chip works, both Christie’s and Sotheby’s mounted strong sales of Impressionist and Modern art in New York last week. Ahead of this week’s sales of Contemporary art, the two big players both improved substantially upon last year’s figures and posted artists records for Modigliani, Léger, Klimt, Jawlensky and Moore against a backdrop of solid levels of demand.

Walking may be an unfashionably slow mode of transport in today’s time-pressured world, but lengthy periods spent on foot in past centuries were made more pleasurable by a vast array of walking aids. This material is now seriously collected and a cluster of cane collections have appeared on the market of late.

WITH buying split 50/50 between trade and private bidders, a total of £84,000 and all bar 84 of the 928 entries getting away, this was one of the healthiest of Andrew Hartley’s bi-annual specialist collectors’ sales to date, on 20 September.

OVER 50 autograph letters and postcards addressed by Siegfried Sassoon to Professor Vivian de Sola Pinto are to be sold by Mill House Auctions of Helston on November 4, together with signed and inscribed copies of Sassoon’s books from de Sola Pinto’s library.

DAVID McAlpine’s eye for quality textiles was evident throughout Fawley House and the most important items were a set of four George I embroidered wall panels, each 6ft 2in x 2ft 91/2in (1.88m x 85cm). Worked in tent and cross stitch in richly coloured wools and silks, these depicted ornate pots full of exotic flowers set on pedestals bearing armorials and surrounded by a menagerie of exotic birds, beasts and Oriental figures.