George I giltwood side table attributed to James Moore, £24,000 at Lots Road Auctions.
1. George I side table – £24,000
This George I giltwood side table, offered by Lots Road Auctions in Chelsea on September 10, is one of a group typically George I giltwood side table. A famous table with similar strapwork top in the Royal collection bears the crowned cypher of George I and the incised maker's name 'Moore'.
These tables appear occasionally for sale in various degrees of originality and auction prices cover a wide range from under £10,000 to over £50,000. This one, despite the losses that would require a full regilding, was in relatively good condition.
A long queue would have formed to buy it anywhere close to the £1200-1800 estimate but it brought £24,000.
2. Miniature globes – £36,000
Pair of miniature table globes by Cary, £36,000 at Dreweatts.
Three-inch globes were mostly sold as pocket globes, typically as a terrestrial globe contained within a ray-skin case with the celestial gores for the heavens pasted inside. However, occasionally they were offered as pairs in cases or with wooden stands as a pair of miniature table globes.
It was one of the latter that sold to an internet bidder for £26,000 (estimate £2000-3000) as part of the clocks and scientific instruments sale at Dreweatts in Newbury on September 13.
Both terrestrial and the much rarer celestial globe had papers by John and William Cary of The Strands, dated 1791. They were consigned for sale as part of a group of items once belonging to Bostonians Edith Wires (1872-1962) and her husband Harry Taft Hayward (1868-1930), cousin of William Howard Taft, the 27th US President.
One of their daughters Mary Elizabeth Taft had married the Chilean born Henry Bernard Arthur de Bruyne and moved to Sussex shortly before the Second World War. Prized for their rarity as a pair, the globes, meridian rings and ebonised stands were also admired for the good original condition.
3. Clarice Cliff ginger jar – £12,000
Large Clarice Cliff ginger jar in the Sliced Circle pattern, £12,000 at Mellors & Kirk.
The typical Clarice Cliff ginger jar measures just under 9in (22cm) high and around 6in (15cm) wide. This example offered by Mellors & Kirk in Nottingham on September 12 was unusually large at 14.5in (37cm) high.
Made by AJ Wilkinson around 1929 it is also in one of most desirable patterns of the Bizarre range, the so-called Sliced Circle design inspired by European Modernism. It was perhaps an exhibition piece.
In good condition, save a few small scuffs to the paintwork, it sailed past its modest guide of £1500-2000 to bring £12,000 from an internet bidder using thesaleroom.com.
4. Japanese Imari bijin – £3000
Late 17th century Japanese Imari bijin, £3000 at David Duggleby.
This Japanese Imari bijin was made at the Imari kilns around 1690-1700. She wears a long kimono decorated with apple blossom and leafy branches.
Depictions of such Bijin, or beautiful ladies, were popular in Japan at this time and it is thought these figures were made for the both the home and the export market. They appear in a number of sizes with this one is unusually large at 2ft 1in (63cm) tall.
At David Duggleby in Scarborough on September 16 it took £3000 (estimate £200-300) from a bidding using thesaleroom.com.
5. EH Shepherd drawing – £30,000
Pooh and Piglet Delivering Parcels by EH Shepherd, £30,000 at Roseberys.
When Ernest Shepard was first recommended to AA Milne in 1923, the author had originally deemed him unsuitable. He did however decide to use him to illustrate a book of poems called When We Were Very Young (1924) and the rest is history.
Shepard did come to resent “that silly old bear” as he felt that the public’s preoccupation with Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends overshadowed all his other work.
However, after selling many of his original drawings through the Sporting Gallery in the 1920s, he was often persuaded to revisit some of his much-loved characters, either for friends and family or on commission, and in the 1950s and ‘60s produced a number of replica drawings for selling exhibitions.
The 4 x 5in (10 x 14cm) pen and ink offered by Roseberys London on September 12 was signed and dated lower right Oct 1st, 1931. A winter scene of Pooh and Piglet Delivering Parcels, it was last at auction at Sotheby’s in March 1970 when it was bought by Elaine Moss (1924-2020). She too was an important figure in children's books, working variously as an advisor, reviewer, editor and writer. From the 1970s, she was the selector for the National Book League’s Children’s Books of the Year awards. Offered by descent with a guide of £20,000-40,000, it took the mid estimate of £30,000.
Sotheby’s holds many of the records for EH Shepherd illustrations having sold Poohsticks Bridge, 1928, which featured in The House at Pooh Corner for £260,000 in 2014 and, in July 2018. the original map of The Hundred Acre Wood from the opening endpapers of the 1926 first edition of Winne-the-Pooh. It took £350,000, having last sold in 1970 for £1700.
