Auction Reports

In family ownership for several generations, this 27oz Charles II sugar box was described by Nottingham auction house Mellors & Kirk (24% buyer’s premium) as “in an exceptional state of preservation, with hardly any sign of wear and no damage or repair worthy of note”.

The October 9-10 sale at Kingham & Orme (25% buyer’s premium) in Evesham included this rare pot lid inscribed Genuine Bears Grease.

Not all early 18th century oak clocks were restricted to a simple style. There were provincial customers who requested more grandeur and country casemakers who could accommodate such requests.

Topping a 360-lot, £242,000 single-owner collection of Martinware and Moorcroft at Kingham & Orme (23% buyer’s premium) was a Robert Wallace Martin grotesque bird.

Bonhams’ new-format Design sale in London on October 14 was topped by Jean Dunand’s 'Les Biches' (the hinds), a lacquered wood folding screen, c.1926.

This bakelite and electroplated cocktail shaker is from the Master Incolor series made for sale at the Wilson and Gill on Regent Street in the 1930s.

A recent sale at Byrne’s (17.5% buyer’s premium) in Chester included 22 lustre wares by the Staffordshire art potter and chemist Bernard Moore.

The most desirable of the varied wares produced by the small ceramics factory established by Vilmos Zsolnay (1828-1900) in the south-west Hungarian town of Pecs are those created after the 1890s.

The latest British & Continental Ceramics & Glass Auction at McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium) was topped by 'La Modista Il Cappellino', a 14in (35cm) Lenci figure.

The Decades of Design sale at Fieldings (24% buyer’s premium inc VAT) in Stourbridge on October 15-16 included 52 works from the family of Albert Wainwright (1898-1943). He was a Castleford artist who trained at the Leeds School of Art in 1914.

While Old Masters were dominating proceedings at Woolley & Wallis’ early September sale, a fortnight earlier it was Modern British art that was turning heads in Salisbury.

Printed volumes and manuscripts contain many rare works and unusual material

More than 700 lots of Decorative Arts and Design spanning the 19th through to the early years of this century were offered for sale by Woolley & Wallis (25/12% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury over two days.

Two pieces of bronze sculpture from the Woolley & Wallis sale on October 6-7

The Woolley & Wallis sale on October 6 included 36 lots by the Birmingham Arts & Crafts jeweller George Edward Hunt that had come by descent from his family. They had featured in an exhibition held at Bonhams in 2006.

This William de Morgan six-tile panel from c.1880 will feature in a two-day sale, Decorative Arts: Design since 1860, at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh on November 2-3.

For the second time in as many sales, Sworders’ (25% buyer’s premium) 20th Century Design auction on October 13 included a ‘microgauze’ wall hanging by the British artist-weaver Peter Collingwood (1922-2008).

Brought back to England by 19th century travel writer Richard Ford, a carved alabaster relief of the Madonna watching over Christ was the outstanding lot from a Gloucestershire country house offered at Mallams Cheltenham (22.5% buyer’s premium).

The 'Indian Sporting' series is the most celebrated of all Spode blue and white transfer-prints. This multi-scene pattern (there are 17 different designs in total) is based on aquatints by Samuel Howitt from 'Oriental Field Sports, Wild Sports of the East' by Captain Thomas Williamson, published in 1807.

Boxes such as these fashioned and painted as cottages are among the most desirable of all 19th century caddies and boxes.