News

IT APPEARS that simple economics may be catching up with eBay sellers, at least in the antiques and collectibles sector. Everyone knows the law of supply and demand: if supply is low and demand high, prices go up. If supply is high and demand doesn’t increase accordingly, prices go down.

More selections from the early summer auctions.

Furniture in country house is eclipsed by piece found in a drawer UK: PAPERWEIGHTS have not hit any sort of headlines in years and anyone outside the coterie of (mostly American) collectors may have assumed they had been relegated to the status of murder weapons in Thirties whodunits – but not so. One became the totally unexpected star of the contents of The Thorne, a country house at Bethsersden which were removed to the salerooms at Canterbury.

UK: CORNISHWARE may be at the lower-priced end of the ceramics market but there is no shortage of enthusiasm as was evident when this 71/4in (18.5cm) jar, illustrated here, sold at £600 at the ‘Kitchenalia’ sale held by niche-market specialist BBR (10 per cent buyer’s premium) on May 20.

A pair of early Levi’s jeans dragged from the mud of a Nevada mining town were worth far more than their weight in gold when sold through eBay on May 25.

UK: EARLY German drinking vessels captured all the attention and big money in Christie’s June 13 sale of silver.

FRANCE: TOULOUSE-Lautrec’s famous 1893 poster of Jane Avril (printed by Chaix), in a five-coloured lithograph version with the rare text addition Jardin de Paris beneath the dancer’s name, spearheaded the Le Mouel poster sale of May 18 with Fr415,000 (£38,400).