South-west England

In our continuing series looking through the keyhole of ‘bricks and mortar’ shops in 2017, ATG talks to John Cabello of Parade Antiques.

The Buckinghamshire countryside, with its rolling hills, fields, hedgerows and trees, inspired much of the art of John Nash (1893-1977), the younger and less well-known brother of Paul Nash.

Like most enduring events, the Bath Decorative Antiques Fair boasts a formula both familiar and distinctive which has been tempered by gradual changes.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

When it comes to the business of selling middle-market collections, the big London salerooms are particularly adept at cherry-picking the best and rejecting the rest.

The Palladian home of the Earls of Pembroke will host the 41st staging of venerable vetted antiques fair on March 2-4.

A hitherto unrecorded teapot attributed to a pioneering North American porcelain factory sold last week for a remarkable £460,000 (plus premium) at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury.

Antiques dealer and fair organiser Marcus Potts is an Art Deco and early 20th century ceramics man, but he is an absolute mine of information on vintage toys.

A very modestly estimated job lot of 25 or so books offered in a recent West Country auction went on to sell for £6500 – but what got some bidders excited?

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships

Experimental work by the Czech Expressionist Ernest Neuschul (1895-1968) chimed with current tastes in a sell-out studio sale in Somerset.

Private material sourced from old estates helped Gloucestershire saleroom Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) get the year off to a positive start.

Duke’s of Dorchester has hired a trio of specialists to grow its auction calendar and attract consignments from outside its immediate catchment area.

Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood of Exeter plans to hold its first-ever 20th century and contemporary art and design sale later this month.

Upholstered Victorian armchairs not being the most in-demand of auction lots at present, the £100-150 estimate of a pair offered at Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium) did not seem overly pessimistic.

Music played its part in the first Dominic Winter sale of the year, with books, scores and other autograph material from another but differently sourced Elgar collection to others offered before by the saleroom.