Salisbury

Offered in one catalogue, British Art pottery was the main thrust of two sales held by Woolley & Wallis staged at the end of last year.

Auctioneers are not just there for the bad things in life. It was in 2006 that Salisbury firm Woolley & Wallis were contacted by Sheffield silversmith C.J. Vander, a company in administration with stock to liquidate.

Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis are to sell the collection of early English, Scottish and Irish silver belonging to the well-known London dealership How.

The highlight of the Oriental sale conducted by Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis on May 22 was this underglaze copper-red Qianlong (1736-1795) mark and period moonflask standing 11in (27cm) high.

Leading country auctioneers Woolley & Wallis will no longer hold general sales of estate merchandise after October.

Two fine lots of 17th century English pewter greeted New Year bidders in the country.

Helped by a £2.6m windfall, Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis emerged from 2005 as the largest-grossing UK provincial saleroom.

The second tranche of a private collection of nutmeg graters was offered at Woolley & Wallis’ October 19 sale.

The final 51 lots of Woolley & Wallis’s sale on October 19 comprised the Fauconberg & Conyers Heirlooms.

“Someday,” wrote The Times in August 1912, “collectors will ransack the town for Martin’s artistic stonewares.”

When Alex Butcher’s eye was drawn to this painting, right, he did not realise that part of the attraction might have been its familiarity.

IT was just three weeks into the First World War when British destroyers engaged the enemy off the Heligoland Bight near Denmark.

Capping a sell-out sale of the first instalment of a private collection of nutmeg graters at Woolley and Wallis on April 20 was this unusual Victorian novelty specimen fashioned as a hinged strawberry, which sold for £8200.

IT is every auctioneer’s dream to find a treasure in a box of odds and ends. How much more exciting it must be when that treasure also proves to be of academic importance, a candidate for the title of the earliest figure in English blue and white porcelain.

A named designer and good provenance sent this oak refectory table and benches, right, to the highest price at Woolley & Wallis’ sale on March 2.

This pair of Hanoverian pattern tablespoons offered at Woolley & Wallis, right, is of interest not just for the unascribed and possibly Scottish marks but for the scratched initials RP and the lightly engraved iconography of a crown, a cardinal’s hat and the name Henry Stuart.

THE Bourne casket, a Restoration needlework casket that failed to sell when offered by Netherhampton Salerooms earlier this year, has been sold by private treaty to the Lancashire Museum Services.

When John Norie (d.2003) began his collection back in the 1950s, caddy spoons were not every collector’s cup of tea.

THIS exquisite George III silver gilt inkstand, right, by John Houle was commissioned for the phenomenally wealthy William Harry Vane (1766-1842), the first Duke of Cleveland, whose estate and personal assets were valued well in excess of £2m.

THE point is often made that so-called apprentice pieces or miniatures will command more than their lifesize equivalents. This was certainly the case with the diminutive oak bureau pictured right, a meticulously made and finely-preserved 16 1/2in (42cm) wide 18th century replica of an otherwise standard Georgian form. Estimated at £3000-4000, it proved the winner on an otherwise difficult day at the Netherhampton Salerooms (15% buyer’s premium) on April 28 when it sold at £6000.