Auctions

FRANCE: With Art Deco becoming increasingly rare and costly, collectors and auctioneers are starting to take a serious interest in Post-Deco: furniture and furnishings from the 1940s and later.

THE trade’s fears that the events of September 11 would usher in the long expected recession with a collapse in international bidding were allayed here in Herefordshire at Brightwells on 12-13 September.

The rediscovery of a significant work by a major Old Master painter is always an event for the art trade, even if the work not obviously commercial. When Anthony Blunt wrote his monograph on Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665) this painting, right, of The Holy Family with St. John the Baptist, executed c.1627-28 when the young Poussin first worked in Rome, was only known from engravings.

Concrete garden furniture is the hottest new thing on the market, says Arundel, West Sussex dealer Spencer Swaffer who is finding benches, chairs, jardinières and planters flying out of his shop almost as soon as they arrive.

PROBABLY the greatest success story of recent years, the railwayana market fostered and virtually cornered by Ian Wright at Sheffield continues to flourish.

As well as providing a venue for pop concerts and motor-cross rallies, Tredegar House is also a favourite location for auctioneers. Last year Sotheby’s used the 16th century estate for their Welsh sale – this year it hosted Phillips auction of The Arts in Wales.

Several auction records were broken when Christie’s New York sold the library of Abel E. Berland in an October 8-9 sale that saw 90 per cent of lots sold for a premium-inclusive total of $14.4m (£9.8m).

FEW clocks can claim to be as rare as this example, pictured right, which is being offered for sale at Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchet in Essex on October 23. The rarity is based in part on the maker’s misfortune.

Manufacturing expertise and a fondness for the hard stuff are notable traits among Scottish folk, and they were well married in this miniature copper whisky still, pictured, offered by Glasgow auctioneers McTear’s (10 per cent buyer’s premium) on September 11.

There were few plate books in this year’s Arts of India sale at Christie’s, held on September 27, but one notable result was provided by Emily Eden’s Portraits of the Princes & Peoples of India, published by J. Dickinson in 1844.

While classic silver chugs along at prices scarcely unchanged since the ’70s boom, novelty pieces provide the market with a buoyant area. The 90-lot silver section offered at Crewkerne on September 13 by Lawrences (15% buyer’s premium) saw only nine fail to get away and no casualties among the novelty pieces from abroad.

Nephew of the influential Amsterdam-based painting teacher Petrus Franciscus Greive (1811-1872), Johan Conrad Greive (1837-1891) was a modestly-talented 19th century Dutch artist who specialised in river and canal scenes often with numerous figures.

IN May 1967 Caroline Lumley and Camilla Cazalet quickly began establishing Lumley Cazalet (33 Davies Street, W1K 4LR. Tel: 020 7491 4767) as leading specialists in late 19th and 20th century prints, with an emphasis on the French School.

A TAKE-UP of 570 lots of the 600 on offer at Clarke Gammon– mainly from a local deceased estate – and a grand total of £75,000 revealed a market in buoyant mood at Guildford on 11 September where the best of a number of highlights answered the current demand for early textiles.

The imminent cessation of all sales – including wine – at Sotheby’s Chicago has left a gap in the Mid-West market that newly-established wine auctioneers Edward Roberts International are keen to fill. Brainchild of Edward Robert Brooks, the much-travelled head of Christie’s and the short-lived Phillips’ North American wine departments, Edward Roberts will mount their first live sale of fine and rare wines at The Union League Club of Chicago on Saturday, November 10.

“For the really top things there’s no shortage of buyers, but the middle ground is weaker,” affirmed Stephen Mould of Sotheby’s wine department. “If you’ve got large parcels that depend on the trade, then bidders are more cautious. But if you’ve got small quantities of the finest things there are plenty of private buyers prepared to pay good money.”

Jean-Vital Remy was one of the most determined and assiduous Dinky toy collectors. Over a relatively short space of time – around 15 years from the mid-1980s – this Belgian enthusiast built up an enormous assemblage of French and English Dinkys spanning the entire production period. His desire for comprehensiveness and determination to acquire pieces with unusual colour or design variations made him a formidable adversary when it came to buying, whether at auctions or in shops or fairs.

THIS week sees the announcement of two new auction houses for the West Midlands, the first based in Stourbridge, near Birmingham, the second in Newport, Shropshire.

Any dealer, collector or curator would love to get hold of the ultimate reference catalogue of Victorian artistic design, especially if it was bound in gilt stamped red morocco and velvet housed in a purpose-built satinwood cabinet complete with four volumes of jury reports and a case of five medals.

At the end of the morning session of Sotheby’s Garden Statuary sale at Billingshurst, the National Trust took over the rostrum to offer such items for gardening enthusiasts as an avenue of 40 young limes from the Trust’s nursery in Cheshire, home visits from Trust gardening experts and so on, but the piece of trade interest was a scrapbook kept by Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst donated by her son Nigel Nicolson.