South-east England

UK: STANDING head and shoulders above all other entries to this monthly sale in Sussex was a fine quality c. 1760 mahogany longcase clock by James Clarke of London.

UK: THE Sussex sale was dominated by the £98,000 bid for L.S. Lowry’s oil on plywood Old Houses (Art Market, Antiques Trade Gazette No. 1479, March 10) but this record bid for the rooms was backed up by a number of pieces of good-quality furniture which saw competitive bidding.

UK: IN THE second of the Oxford auctioneers’ regular monthly sales the focus was largely on jewellery reflecting auctioneer Benjamin Lloyd’s belief in the increasing numbers of private clients or ‘impulse buyers’ who may come to the saleroom looking for a mahogany sideboard and leave with a diamond ring.

UK: AN 18TH CENTURY map of the home town, bottom right, and an embarassing moment at the ball for Cinderella, top right, are my two illustrated highlights from this Berkshire sale, but a few other things from the 40 book and map lots that were tacked onto the end of a picture sale are described below.

UK: NEW and old technology were both part of a successful Saturday event for the Surrey auctioneers.

UK: FOLLOWING these Surrey room’s Gaudy Welsh extravaganza last November, a further 40 pieces featured in their 500-lot January sale.

UK: THE hottest property in Dreweatt Neate’s, Newbury, January auction of ceramic and glass, was late 19th century decorative porcelain. “You cannot have enough late 19th century in your sales these days,” said specialist Geoffrey Stafford Charles. Strong prices were paid for Mason’s ironstone and Oriental porcelain of this period, but a turn-of-the-century Coalport blue ground part dessert service took the biggest money.

UK: A CLUSTER of four-figure furniture entries at Brighton saw the biggest price reserved for a set of eight Regency mahogany dining chairs.

UK: THE scarcity of good-quality, untouched country furniture, even in such rich fields as Oxfordshire, and the increasingly selective attitude of bidders – becoming “more selective by the sale”, according to Mallams auctioneer Ben Lloyd – are causes of concern for auctioneers across the country.

UK: THE first serious outbreak of Hobbits of 2001 occurred in Hamptons’ Godalming salerooms on February 15, when a first edition set of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the three volumes of 1955-56 in first issue dust wrappers with some slight discolouration and chipping, sold at £11,000.

UK: THERE was a time when any antique eyebath brought a gleam to the eyes of auctioneers, but one might have thought those days had passed. Not so, if the reaction to an example offered in the Dorking Halls sale is anything to go by.

UK: THE current market for anything by L.S. Lowry (1887-1976) was highlighted on January 6 at Cranbrook Auction Rooms (10 per cent buyer’s premium) by this rather uncharacteristic signed crayon drawing, right, The Fat Man.

UK: QUITE possibly starting its long career as a Christmas present for a child, this Steiff teddy bear was the familiar target of collectors at the Horsham rooms of Latimers (15 per cent buyer’s premium) on December 14, the second of a two-day dispersal at this new addition to the Sussex auction world.

UK: THIS looks the life! Relaxed in elegant company, high above the world and its cares on a sunlit terrace with parasols and palms.

UK: SUPPLY the goods and, through hell or, in this case, high water, they will come. The new Chichester operation of Henry Adams underlined this article of auctioneering faith when at their second sale they were able to put up a good range of items sought by the middle and upper markets and, despite the serious local flooding (one would-be buyer marooned miles away phoned to complain that the sale should have been cancelled), they enjoyed a considerable success.

UK: WITH the trade’s rumour mill in overdrive over the possible closure of Sotheby’s Billingshurst, the decision by a West Sussex businessman to open a new auction house Latimers (15 per cent buyer’s premium) in Horsham, barely 10 miles away from Summers Place, could well prove to be timely.

THE parliamentary committee assessing the merits of the Kent Bill have called on the Government to introduce public legislation to cover the whole country instead.

DETAILS of the planned development of Sotheby’s UK salerooms announced in last week’s Antiques Trade Gazette are unlikely to become clear before mid-December at the earliest.

DEALERS in the Dover area have contacted the Antiques Trade Gazette to complain about a local police initiative asking them to fingerprint their customers.

UK: FOUR weeks of expert evidence and deliberation has ended with the Parliamentary Select Committee needing the chairman’s casting vote to keep the Kent Bill from being thrown out.