Scotland

CHRISTIE'S have announced that discussions with the National Trust for Scotland concerning a private sale of Dumfries House and its contents have ended.

ATTRACTING dealers from both sides of the Border to McTear's (15% buyer's premium) September 24 sale was a Regency figured maple and parcel gilt breakfast table.

SINCE its first appearance in 1994, Peter McEwan’s Dictionary of Scottish Art & Architecture has been an obligatory presence on the bookshelves of anyone with a serious interest in buying and/or selling Scottish art.

JUST shy of their bicentenary, Whytock and Reid, the Edinburgh furniture makers, were forced into liquidation earlier this year. Foreign competition put paid to a company established in 1807 by Richard Whytock and John Reid that, in its 19th and early 20th century glory days, furnished the great houses and castles of Scotland, often working in partnership with the architect Robert Lorimer.

THE recently published, enlarged and revised second edition of Peter McEwan’s indispensable Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture describes the Perthshire-born landscape painter Joseph Henderson (1832-1908) as “one of Scotland’s half-forgotten painters who deserves better recognition than he has hitherto received”.

ALTHOUGH the 616-lot sale held by Thomson, Roddick & Medcalf (15% buyer’s premium) in Edinburgh took place back on June 23, the sale highlight merits recording. This was the finely worked silver gilt globe cup, right, probably made in Germany.

ONE of 11, generally very fine, British drinking glasses consigned from ‘a Highland lady’ to The Scottish Sale held by Bonhams (17.5% buyer's premium) in Edinburgh on August 18-20, was this 3 1/4in (8cm) high polychromed enamel firing glass, right, probably decorated c.1765 by member of the Beilby family of Newcastle.

PART of a 12-vol. Winchester edition (1911-12) of the works of Jane Austen, bound in half red calf gilt by Sotherans, that made £3400 as part of the July 21 Lyon & Turnbull sale at Jordanstone.

Right: sold for £4200 in the July 21 sale held by Lyon & Turnbull at Jordanstone, an Ayrshire country house, was Rowlandson’s The Comforts of Bath, a set of a dozen prints issued by Fores in 1798, and here loosely inserted in an album of full red crushed morocco.

RIGHT: this suite of Victorian silver gentleman’s dressing table bottles is among 200 lots donated from Dorset homes that will be sold for charity at auction on September 18.

RIGHT: although an undeniably rare beast, the super-cute sleeping Wemyss piglet, just 6 1/2in (16.5cm) long, has made a number of appearances at Sotheby's Gleneagles over the years.

EXCEPTIONAL golfing collectables can still command exceptional prices.

TURN the clock back some 30 years, and regulars to Bonhams’ Knightbridge rooms might just recall a rather dapper, pinstripe-suited auctioneer by the name of Alexander Meddowes.

THE Fergusson show at Alexander Meddowes, coincides with Edinburgh’s exhilarating annual Festival, which brings with it not only hundreds of incredibly diverse theatrical shows but a good sprinkling of art exhibitions too.

PICTURED here are two outstanding pieces of provincial silver sold in the country during August.

DEFINITELY in the running for the accolade of busiest organiser is Harrogate-based Galloway Antiques Fairs who make one of their many annual forays North of the Border from September 10 to 12 for the Blair Castle Antiques Fair at Blair Atholl near Pitlochry in Perthshire.

OFFERED as part of a large sports sale held by Lyon & Turnbull of Edinburgh on July 12 was the angling and sporting library of Major Barton William-Powlett (1871-1953) of Cadhay in Devon.

HELPED by contacts with the Traquair family, Shapes have a great track record selling the work of Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852-1936), the Dublin-born mixed-media artist who became a leading member of Scotland’s Arts and Crafts movement.

PAINTINGS offered at Lyon & Turnbull’s (17.5% buyer's premium) July 21 Jordantone dispersal were mostly comfortable furnishing pictures of some quality including this uncharacteristic Joseph Farquharson oil, right, entitled Fisherwoman on a Deserted Sandy Beach. Very different from the artist’s trademark mix of sheep, heather and swirling snow, the 22in x 3ft (55x 91cm) image of a solitary figure walking barefoot on the shimmering sand went to a private buyer at £17,000.

ADMIRAL Robert FitzRoy (1805-1865) has several claims to fame. He was companion to Darwin on the Beagle, the first Head of Meteorology at the Board of Trade (the Met Office) and, using the newly invented electric telegraph, one of the first to attempt a scientific weather forecast. His first daily weather forecasts were published in The Times in 1860, thus introducing the British public to a new pastime – complaining that the forecasters got it wrong.