Auctions

UK: A George III Chippendale style giltwood wall mirror with a swan neck and cartouche pediment, 7ft 10in high by 3ft 5in wide (2.39 x 1.04m) was consigned to Gorringes’ sale in Lewes on April 21 with expectations of £2500-3000 and sold to a telephone bidder at £22,000 plus 10 per cent premium.

UK: A ROUTINE dispersal at the Ladybank salerooms was led by a Georgian oak lowboy of typical composition which attracted £13504.

Furniture & Works of Art Usually Sotheby’s (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) offer a sale of English furniture at around the same time as Christie’s, but the Bond Street auctioneers’ next comparable event will not take place until June 4.

UK: DURING a routine house call to a mid-Victorian terrace in Grantham, auctioneer Colin Young unearthed half of a pair of Victorian comports which were destined to establish a house record for ceramics at the Grantham Auction Rooms.

UK: ALTHOUGH there were no real star entries at this monthly dispersal, around 727 lots managed to generate a total at £120,00 boosted by a silver section and some pieces of local interest.

UK: IN common with a number of other London auctioneers, Bonhams (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium), were reserving their best quality Old Master consignments for July, but their April 13 sale in Knightsbridge did at least include the decorative charms of this 3ft 21/2in by 2ft 43/4in (98 x 73cm) canvas, illustrated here, of a young woman tending a bouquet of flowers, signed by the Italian-based still life specialist Abraham Brueghel (1631-1697).

UK: CONSIGNED by a Stockport couple who had been keen skiers during the 1950s, this late 19th century Black Forest carved hall seat, left, proved the unexpected highlight of Bonham’s (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) sale of general antiques in Manchester on March 24.

US: ON August 15 1876, nearly ten years after his fellow American inventor Christopher Scholes had offered the world its first ever typewriter, Thomas Edison patented an electric method for the small businessman to print and copy several documents.

Bearnes, Exeter, March 23 Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent UK: HIGHLIGHTS of this sale included Thomas Short’s Comparative History of the Increase and Decrease of Mankind in England... and also a Meteorological Discourse, 1767, which, in the process of assembling historical and medical information, advocates early marriage and denounces alcohol as ‘a Stygian poison’. It sold at £100.

FRANCE: THE dispersal of the Paul Amos collection of French medals, under the auspices of expert Sabine Bourgey at Piasa (10.854 per cent buyer’s premium) in Paris on March 8 represents an event for which we have to go back some years to find anything comparable.

UK: CHRISTIE’S chairman Lord Hindlip has declared himself more excited about the prospect of selling the £20m plus collection of Nathaniel and Albert von Rothschild on July 8 than about any other sale in his 36 years at the auction house.

G.E. Sworder & Sons, Stansted Mountfitchet, March 16 Buyer’s premium: 10 per cent UK: "CERAMICS and collectables are usually well received by the trade, but at this 1000-lot sale they were met with a muted response, silver and jewellery were eagerly sought after while the furniture met with a keen response from trade and private buyers,” said auctioneer Guy Schooling.

The flying logbook of Fred Shaw, an RCAF navigator, received quite a lot of media publicity when Sotheby’s Sussex announced its sale, because of a suggestion that it sheds light on the disappearance of bandleader Glenn Miller in December 1944.

Comtemporary Ceramics UK: WITH THEIR big event scheduled for June, Bonhams (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) March 25 Contemporary Ceramics sale was very much a mid-season affair.

Ewbank, Send, March 25 Buyer’s premium: 10 per cent UK: An amusing, illustrated letter sent by the 16-year-old Edward Coley Burne Jones to his aunt Amelia on May 7, 1849, topped this sale with a London bid of £880.

Carolean court cupboard emerges from Cumbrian chicken shed UK: EARLY oak furniture attracted the higher prices at the quarterly sale ‘Antiques and Collectors’ sale at the Skirsgill Salerooms in Cumbria where the most valuable lot was a James II one-piece oak court cupboard.

UK: AT this two-day, 1112-lot sale in East Sussex auctioneer Mark Hudson was pleased to see a broader buying base than has been the case at many rooms of late saying: “Middle-range furniture featured at the beginning of the furniture section was easy to sell.”

UK: PROBABLY commissioned by General Charles Churchill – whose arms it bears – for his European campaigns after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, this William and Mary silver-gilt travelling set came up at Mellors & Kirk of Nottingham on March 25-26 where it sold privately at £48,000 (plus 10 per cent premium).

US: How do you titillate an ocelot? You oscillate its tit a lot. Kenny Everett’s immortal insight into the sexual life of one of the obscurer members of the cat family is usually quite difficult to drag into an auction report. But how can titillation be resisted when someone is prepared to pay $525,000 (£324,075) for this painting of an ocelot at Sotheby’s New York (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium).

US: ONE of 167 illustrations which make up Frans Masereel’s My Book of Hours, one of the woodcut novels pioneered by the Belgian political cartoonist in the early part of this century.