Lawrences of Crewkerne

A series of strong bids brought a total of £51,900 for a Chelsea fable painted part-tea service at Lawrence’s of Crewkerne on March 14.

Rise of Winifred Nicholson goes on apace with amazing bid of £100,000 for portrait of Ben: Over the last two or three years Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981), the first wife of Ben Nicholson, has become an increasingly significant figure in the Modern British market, culminating in the record £52,000 paid last July at Phillips for one of her trademark window still lives.

Somerset auctioneers Lawrence Fine Art will close their Taunton salerooms on December 21 and stop holding monthly sales at Crewkerne.

As every silver dealer knows, the value of standard Victorian three-piece tea sets has gone down, not up, over the past decade. But introduce a fashionable style to the casting, and the price will inevitably soar.

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.

Ebony furniture is not to everyone’s taste, but a fished-out brown furniture market and a couple of colonial sleepers in the regional salerooms recently has prompted speculation that the black stuff could be due for a revival.

“Good but second-rate Old Master paintings bought for their images rather than their names” was an accurate enough assessment by auctioneer Richard Kay of the pictures on offer in Lawrence’s (15% buyer’s premium) July 16 sale of the contents of Horsington Manor, Templecombe, Somerset on July 16.

UK: ILLUSTRATED on the front page of last week’s Antiques Trade Gazette was one of of 79 coloured litho plates by Smit and Keulemans after the original charcoal drawings by Joseph Wolf, the brilliant ornithological artist to whose “unrivalled talent” Daniel Giraud Eliot dedicated his two volume Monograph of the Phasianidae, or Family of the Pheasants of 1870-72.

UK: While the art market has been quieter in the provincial salerooms since the New Year, an exception was provided by this oil on canvas View of Venice at the Entrance to the Grand Canal, which appeared at Lawrence's of Crewkerne on February 17.

UK: CONSIGNED to the Taunton rooms of Lawrence’s from a local source was this German tinplate money bank depicting Mickey Mouse with a concertina.

UK: WEST Country auctioneers Lawrence’s of Crewkerne posted a house record on May 6 when they sold this pair of George III marquetry inlaid rosewood and satinwood card tables to a New York dealer for £150,000 (plus 12.75 per cent premium).