Auction Reports

Headlines about antiquities today usually follow two paths: either highlighting the issue of looting or focusing on the huge sums treasures of the ancient world can command.

If bidders were to be lured to the ageless aspect of antiquities, one might think that a lamp which first lit the darkness two millennia ago would be hard to resist.

Taxidermy, having emerged in a few years from a dusty, rather unseemly subject to a rostrum hot topic, continues to flourish across the country.

The biannual world tour of tribal lands – Alaska to New Zealand via Arizona, Africa and Taiwan – organised by auctioneer Will Hobbs at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium) offered a global view of what is an active, if often unpredictable, field.

What still feels to many like the opening month of a new season got off to an excellent start with some serious, if occasionally unexpected, five-figure bids at four major provincial salerooms.

Figurative art was the other big seller in early September, led by the waxwork of Medardo Rosso’s sculpture Bambina Ridente (see last week’s News pages) which topped a successful week of sales at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) when it more than doubled the top estimate at £180,000.

Auction house Lyon & Turnbull hails the encouraging return of American interest at its September 5 sale.

An album of 40 albumen images by pioneering photographer John Thomson with direct appeal to the market for early depictions of the Orient was the outstanding star at Hartleys (17.5% buyer’s premium).

Two Worcester ‘Limoges’ chalices were the star lots at Stourbridge auction house Fieldings (21% buyer’s premium).

This pair of Qing vases caught the eye of Hertfordshire auctioneer Richard Kluk when valuing jewellery at a London home.

A scarce Meissen figure, but no stranger to these pages in recent months (see ATG No 2349), Count Bruhl’s Tailor rode his goat to more success at Gildings (15% buyer’s premium) on September 4.

UK dealers buying foreign silver, overseas bidders taking British work and generally solid interest for traditional pieces of mid-ranking silver brightened up the normally quieter late summer sales across the country.

One of the more unusual clocks on offer this summer was the late 19th century French ‘devil band’ mantel clock that attracted international bidding at Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium).

The product of child labour – but conscious-clear purchases for bidders – provided two of the top lots at a specialist textiles and costume sale at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) of North Yorkshire.

‘More affordable’ Lucie Rie lots head a selection of hammer highlights from summer sales.

Outselling the usual favourite Bond movie posters, a British Quad for Get Carter starring Michael Caine topped the 69-lot specialist sale of movie posters at Ewbank’s (22.5% buyer’s premium).

Pitched at £20-40, a small bisque doll with jointed limbs, below, topped Mitchells’ (20% buyer’s premium) toys sale at Cockermouth on July 21.

Topping two days of steady selling and 750 wide-ranging lots at Leominster saleroom Brightwells’ (17.5% buyer’s premium) summer auction was a Republic period cong-form vase in the style of the renowned Qianjiang School artist Wang Yeting.

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).

The first stand-alone British and European sculpture sale to be held by Dreweatts (24% buyer’s premium) was a solid-enough affair to justify department head Cristian Beadman’s belief that there is an exploitable gap in the market.