News

Establishing a new landmark for a picture lot sold at auction outside London, two portraits by Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) took £900,000 at Dreweatt Neate’s Donnington Priory salerooms last week.

Alongside the Americana offered in the New York salerooms earlier this month, there was a strong representation of early English ceramics. Sotheby’s January 20 sale of the pottery collection of Harriet Carlton Goldweitz was followed the next day by Christie’s auction of the Mrs J. Insley Blair collection, which included some key Staffordshire productions alongside its blue chip American furnishings.

A Susie Cooper vase sold for £3850 on eBay on January 13. The vase, which measures just over 12in (30cm) high, is decorated with a hunter in a loin cloth stalking two deer or ibex close to a stylised tree – an unrecorded design of around 1931 or ’32. Similar pieces are known from a publicity shot taken in the 1930s although most were thought to have been destroyed during a hit on the factory during the Blitz.

Late January/early February has become the new slot for golfiana sales with events held by Bonhams Chester (January 28) and Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh (February 7).

On a cold January 26 night in Edinburgh, a packed saleroom at Lyon & Turnbull witnessed a defining moment in the Scottish art market.

BONHAMS have won a top award from Euromoney magazine for their client services.

An antiques dealer from Heathfield in Sussex has become the first British woman to complete the punishing Dakar Rally. The appropriately named Patsy Quick, owner of Toad Hall Antiques, set off on the 16-day trek on January 1 in Portugal, crossing Spain and Africa in the 5600-mile trip to Dakar, Senegal. She crossed the finish line on her motorbike one place ahead of her partner, Clive Town.