Features

Chiswick Auctions’ May 20 sale in west London titled 'Wood Speaks: From Chinese furniture to Scholar’s Treasures' includes a collection of 200 Qing dynasty carved wood displays.

A pair of Worcester dishes of so-called ‘Blind Earl’ form was a best-seller in the ceramics section that opened Dreweatts’ (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) spring sale.

On May 21 Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury will offer 'The Grand View of Chao Mountain' by Zhang Da Qian (1899-1983) estimated at £100,000-150,000 as part of its sale of Chinese paintings and works of art.

The May 14-16 Interiors series at Bellmans of Wisborough Green, West Sussex, features a substantial Asian section.

In today’s world when employment fluidity is the norm, it is rare to find someone who had been in the same job and place all their working life. But when he hung up his hat last week from his role as international director of glass and British ceramics at Bonhams, John Sandon had clocked up almost 44 years, man and boy, in the same saddle.

In the latest of our occasional series of collector interviews, we talk to entrepreneur Algy Cluff, a former army officer and oil and mining business supremo, about his collecting tastes

This framed wood panel decorated in gold, silver and red lacquer with a pair of spiny lobsters on a rocky outcrop is signed 'Gyoen Hachijuni O Koma Zeshin' (An old man in his 82nd year, Kona Zeshin) and dated 1888.

The latest version of Christie’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) Collector sale in New York featured an interesting collection of equine pottery: an ensemble of 10 large-scale English pearl ware horses, the majority made in the Leeds pottery in the first half of the 19th century.

Works by Namikawa Yasuyuki underline how buyers are aiming at the very best when it comes to the Japanese market ahead of a series of UK sales.

Some early Chinese objects are included in the Timeline Auctions sale in Harwich, Essex on May 28.

The famous Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba once owned this pair of ‘Dragon and Phoenix’ bottle vases which were sold at auction from her estate in 2015.

Included in a mixed-discipline sale held in Paris by Daguerre (28% buyer’s premium inc VAT) at Drouot was a Sèvres bough pot in soft paste porcelain.

Estimated at £300-500, a finely decorated Qing famille rose pen box and cover was knocked down for £33,000 at a recent sale at John Nicholson’s (25% buyer’s premium).

A Chinese ‘sleeper’ emerged in a Vintage and General Sale at Gardiner Houlgate (20% buyer’s premium), Corsham, near Bath on April 25 courtesy of a textbook ‘scholar’s’ object.

Duke’s Asian sale on May 20 includes this Wanli (1572-1620) mark and period wucai ‘zun’ altar vase.

Last November Roseberys in London sold a set of 16 paintings on silk by Kim Jun Keun, better known by his artistic name Kisan, for a surprise £40,000.

The 12th edition of the International Antiques Fair takes place in Hong Kong this month at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. It runs from May 24-28, coinciding with the main spring auction series held by Christie’s.

The highlight of a dedicated ceramics sale held at Drouot by Fraysse (22.17% buyer’s premium) was this large 16 x 22in (41 x 56cm) early French, Moustiers, faience basin made at the Clerissy factory.

Underpinned by bids from the internet, silver from beyond the British Isles is these days a stronger feature of provincial sales.

Satirical magazine Private Eye once ran a series highlighting the fatuity of interviews by supposedly asking famous names their feelings towards spoons, there being nothing more mundane or less worthy of comment. But the appeal of an antique spoon to the cognoscenti is not difficult to appreciate.