South-east England

This oil painting of the RMS Queen Mary, below, by marine painter William McDowell (1888-1950) was taken to a multi-estimate £12,000 at Surrey saleroom John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium).

“The selling price was really encouraging,” said Chichester auctioneer Peter Parker after an 18th century walnut chest made £5800, “but it just emphasises how polarised the market is between the top end and the rest.”

As with the overall market, Dutch furniture is much less popular than it once was and the 18th century walnut, floral marquetry and ivory-inlaid bombé bureau cabinet, below, had a couple of condition problems for bidders at Andrew Smith (19% buyer’s premium).

The great Hungarian love affair with Zsolnay Pec ceramics goes on, most recently witnessed in the East Sussex rooms of Burstow & Hewett (15% buyer’s premium) when 27 lots were offered.

Children’s author Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) and Indian activist Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) don’t seem to have much in common. At separate auctions held later this month, however, both will have correspondence appearing on the market for the first time.

“We are always being asked about running our art fairs in Surrey,” said Deborah James, director with Sarah McAllister of Contemporary Art Fairs.

Outsold, predictably enough, by an 18th-19th century Chinese vase, two late 19th century Persian moulded pottery tiles were the eye-catchers among a buoyant Asian works of art section at Billingshurst auction house Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium).

With the centenary of the act that enfranchised female voters aged over 30 very much in the headlines, a collection of First World War uniforms and a photo album sold by C&T Auctioneers (20% buyer’s premium) underlines the role played by women in that conflict.

Marked CRA and dated 1895, a set of three silver spoons offered at auction represent a key point in the career of one of the giants of the Arts & Crafts movement, Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942).

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham described making her late work, a colourful and energetic collection, as ‘letting rip’.

Antique Church Furnishings, which describes itself as ‘God’s Furniture since 1985’, sells almost everything in the religious line – from chasubles to crucifixes and misericordes to missal stands.

Galloway Antiques Fairs returns for its second edition at the Midhurst stately home Cowdray House this year.

Billed as a collection, possibly better described as a hoard, the contents of boxes stored in warehouse units were “the magic ingredients for auction goers” according to Dreweatts’ deputy chairman James Nicholson.

In our series looking through the keyhole of ‘bricks and mortar’ shops, ATG talks to Brenda Nassarian of English and French decorative interiors business Arundel Eccentrics. When and why did you open the shop?

A pendulum clock used in an early longitude trial will be offered for sale by Dreweatts next month.