Buckinghamshire

BUCKINGHAM-based Dickins Auctioneers have pulled a major rabbit out of the hat for their inaugural Spring picture sale on April 17 by including a previously unseen collection of 24 Erté (1892-1990) gouache theatrical costume designs which will include this one, right, for Showgirls.

The highlight of the sale conducted by Bourne End Auction Rooms (12% buyer’s premium) near Marlow, Buckinghamshire, on March 4 was this pair of tin-glazed earthenware plates, right, made c.1740 by Saverio Grue at the Castelli factory in Naples.

DEALERS are always looking out for a seriously undercatalogued lot and at Amersham Auction Rooms (15% buyer’s premium) on February 5 they found one.

THE list of manufacturers who made cocktail shakers and accessories in the interwar years reads like a roll-call of the great luxury houses of the early 20th century: Asprey, Cartier, Tiffany, Hermès, Alfred Dunhill, Louis Vuitton, Puiforcat, Lalique and Baccarat. However, the firm responsible for some of today’s most coveted cocktail shakers is J.A. Henckels of Dusseldorf.

Waddesdon Manor, the French chateau-style house built for the Rothschild banking family near Aylesbury, lost a group of around 100 gold boxes and other precious objects from its world-famous collections following a break-in in the early hours of the morning of June 10.

WELL-known at the quality fairs, Oriental specialists Glade Antiques hold their first selling exhibition at their Buckinghamshire galleries from May 4 to 18.

Full militarisation of a collapsing German economy towards the end of the First World War resulted in the country’s famous toy makers struggling for raw materials. Richard Steiff, director of the eponymous bear factory, was forced to find an alternative fabric to mohair, an unobtainable luxury, so that production could continue in 1919.

THE sale at Amersham Auction Rooms (15 per cent buyer’s premium) on October 3 had a number of items with collector appeal – none more so than this Wemyss cat, right, a speciality within a speciality. The vendors had no knowledge of the value of the 123/4in (32cm) black and grey cat but bidders at Buckinghamshire didn’t need the Wemyss Ware Made in England painted mark to the base to recognise it for what it was and the cat sold to a local dealer at £4000.

ONE of the most widely recognised furniture designs of the 20th century, Ray and Charles Eames’ reclining chair and ottoman, designed in 1956 for the film director Billy Wilder, has also been among the most mass produced. Every second-hand design shop in Britain will either stock a copy, or will tell you they have just sold one, but the recent proliferation of online warehouse retailers has stabilised the price for modern copies at around £2000.

THERE were few out and out stars at the Amersham Buckinghamshire rooms on 6 June but the buyers were keen enough to support the auctioneers’ contention that, with more widespread holidays and the Internet, it is only vendors who are cautious about midsummer sales.

A former chief executive of Vernon’s Pools hit the jackpot at Vectis (10 per cent buyer’s premium) on May 8-9, when the specialist toy auctioneers dispersed just over 2000 lots of his Dinky and Corgi vehicles at their Buckingham salerooms for a total of £350,000.

Over the last six months Amersham Auction Rooms have reported an increase in prices for ceramics and collectables in contrast to static or falling bids placed for furniture.

One of the greatest public works that Sir Edwin Lutyens undertook was the erection of a doll’s house for Queen Mary in 1923. A miniature palace inside Windsor Castle, Mary’s doll’s house was more opulently decorated than the humble abodes of her loyal, grown-up subjects.

A clutch of Oriental entries were among the more interesting works in the Amersham Auction Rooms’ otherwise run-of-the-mill offering of 324 antiques and collectables on 2 August.

Waddesdon Manor, the Rothschilds’ country estate in Buckinghamshire, has come over all fashionable. The theme for their 2001 season is Art in Fashion. In the garden, the parterre has been given over to the talents of fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, who has designed two vibrantly coloured rainbow displays of carpet bedding.

MEMORIES of the Raj were the selling point at the collectors’ sale held at Amersham Auction Rooms (15% buyer’s premium) on July 5 which included pieces acquired by Lord William Hailey during his Governorship of the Punjab during the 1920s.

UK: Collectors and dealers will get a rare chance to bid for prints by pioneering photographers Roger Fenton and James Robertson, who made their names during the Crimean War, at an auction on behalf of a photographers’ charity on April 26 in central London.

UK: THIS looks the life! Relaxed in elegant company, high above the world and its cares on a sunlit terrace with parasols and palms.