UK

A painting by Scottish artist Dorothy Johnstone (1892-1980), executed near the peak of her career in 1921 made £3250 at Edinburgh saleroom Franklin Browns (15% buyer’s premium).

This inter-war ‘English school’ portrait of a seated gentleman wearing a bow tie, bought for around £150 three decades ago, sold for an unexpected £7600 at Charterhouse (21% buyer’s premium) on January 17. The unfinished 4ft 2in x 3ft 4in (1.27 x 1.01m) oil was dated 1922 but unsigned.

Textiles represent a wide and varied collecting field, a huge range of which is displayed in the show 'Material: Textile' at Messums Wiltshire, from practical pieces to intricately conceived works of art.

Offered to a packed and enthusiastic saleroom, the 750-lot silver sale at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne was divided into three parts: an extraordinary reference library, a broad sweep of the market for British and Continental white metal and a niche single-owner collection. It brought two-and-three-quarter cheers.

A rare blue-printed plate featuring the legendary cricketer WG Grace (1848-1915) is among the highlights at the Chester Antiques Fair.

An eight-day arched brass dial rolling moon-case clock, c.1750, is on offer for £3350 from Lancaster House Antiques at the next Galloway Antiques Fair at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire.

The names of two 17th century makers took these two lantern clocks way above estimates at Sworders’ (23% buyer’s premium) sale at Stansted Mountitchet. Both were from the Barbara Holliday collection that majored on Modern British art (see Art Market, ATG No 2377).

Adams Antiques Fairs rewards stall-holders who last the course.

The best meat platters have weathered the dip in fortunes of Staffordshire pearlware. The Durham Ox series remains a favourite pattern and there was no shortage of northern private bidders when two c.1820 examples were offered at Tennants’ (20% buyer’s premium) Leyburn sale on January 12.

'London Fashion Week' hits the city from February 15-19 in a dizzying whirl of catwalk shows from 250 designers at top venues.

This late 19th century cameo glass vase by the highly collectable Stourbridge maker Stevens & Williams was the outstanding offering among the 195 lots at Michael J Bowman’s (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale at Chudleigh on January 19.

The antiques trade descended on The Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle for the opening of an exhibition celebrating dealers’ shops, tastes, practices and their role in the creation of museum collections.

Husband-and-wife team Henrietta Lewis and Alan Knight, both keen antique and vintage collectors, opened the Diss Emporium in the pretty Norfolk town nine months ago.

Industry trade bodies have launched a survey that will attempt to measure the financial impact of the Ivory Act (2018) which comes into force later this year. Collectors, dealers and auctioneers of antique ivory are being encouraged to take part.

A set of four Cotswold School Arts & Crafts wall sconces, one shown below, was catalogued by Moore Allen & Innocent (20% buyer’s premium) as in the Wild Strawberry pattern and in the manner of Ernest Gimson (1864-1919).

On January 10, Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) sold a single-owner collection of polar and other travel books – reported in ATG No 2376 – but the Christmas/New Year period was a busy one overall for the North Yorkshire auction house.

Dated London 1679 in a Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) sale of January 10 was a job lot that included four unframed Hogarth prints, a framed royal proclamation of 1800 relating to the production of grain and a “1679 broadside, printed for T.N. that is headed A List of the Parliament of Women”.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from February 5-14, 2019.

“There’s no money around in January” is the refrain you often hear from businesses in the new year. But, as we know, the auction world behaves differently from other commercial markets.

The £140,000 record-breaking Cedric Morris lower painting at Chichester saleroom Henry Adams (plus 20% buyer’s premium) was not the only work by an artist-plantsman to feature in the January 17 sale (see ATG No 2377 for more on that Morris result).