16 17th April 2010
auction reports
Flooding back – but this time it’s the buyers
■ ‘Best sale in nine years’ for Cockermouth auctioneers as private collectors pile in to snap up Dalkeith House furnishings
Terence Ryle
reports
ANY other businessman saying of his latest venture that he had been “selling yesterday’s pieces at yesterday’s prices”, would have been wringing his hands. Being an auctioneer, Mark Wise of Mitchells, Cockermouth, was ringing his spring sale’s praises.“The room was really fizzing again” he said. “It was the best sale in nine years, the second best sale we’ve ever had.”
The Cumbrian auctioneer had some
pre-sale fears that last November’s devastating floods at Cockermouth might deter people coming to the town even though it is recovering bravely and the auction house itself escaped the inundation.
In the event, the rooms were packed with people ready to buy. The two-day selling-rate of 80 per cent was, in itself, a reason for satisfaction but that figure was dragged back by an under-performing weapons section and a selection of mainly modern jewellery which both recorded sales rates of under 50 per cent. “It was the furniture which did so well,” said Mr Wise. “More than 300 lots and more than 90 per cent sold and how often can you say that these days? “A lot of it was the sort of good
Victorian material which has been so hard to get away, but private buyers were so keen to buy that the trade could hardly get started.”
There are few pieces of furniture more emblematic of Victorian tastes than hefty credenzas which have plunged in price from their popular period of a decade or two back. Here, for all its obvious quality, a 6ft 3in (1.91m) wide walnut and boxwood-strung inverted breakfront example with a substantial rear mirror, catalogued as a cabinet, looked rather optimistically estimated at £2000-3000. It sailed away to a private buyer at
£4200.
Estimates, however, do remain important.
A fine Regency mahogany desk attributed to Gillows of Lancaster was guided at £15,000-20,000 but it had been a recent purchase by the vendor and was a seen piece. It was bought in. By contrast, the Queen Anne walnut cabinet-on-chest illustrated on this page, was estimated at just £1000-1500. “I was a bit concerned as to how well it would restore,” said Mr Wise of the
Above: Queen Anne cabinet-on-chest – £12,200 at Mitchells of Cockermouth.
piece which had undergone some restoration 100 years or more ago and was on later bracket feet. “However, dealers felt the earlier work was minor and the condition was original enough. It hadn’t been thinned back and it was a good original piece. I could have pitched it higher but then it might not have sold so I decided on an estimate to signal it was there to sell.” Commission bids came in at around the £3000 mark but with four phones booked and strong bidding in the room, the cabinet-on-chest finally went to the UK trade at £12,200. In a town of around just 7000 people, and a rather sparsely populated, if fairly
Ashbee knife cuts it as Cumbria caters for buyers
CUMBRIA’S fine art salerooms are unusually accommodating to travelling buyers, aligning their sales in close proximity to allow for the viewing of several ’rival’ events in a matter of days. Following on from Mitchells’ sale in Cockermouth, both of the salerooms in nearby Carlisle held catalogued events in late March.
The evocative mid 18th century China trade portrait of a Jesuit missionary sold at £14,000 (see last week’s Art Market) was the highlight of the sale conducted by Thomson Roddick & Medcalf on March 31. Pictured right is a 6in (15cm) silver butter knife – unmistakably the work of Charles Robert Ashbee for the Guild of Handicraft – that was offered by H&H Auction
Rooms (17.5% buyer’s premium) on March 29. Hallmarked
Guild of Handicraft butter knife – £1800 at H&H.
for London 1901, it is mounted to a wirework handle with a red cabochon. Duke’s of Dorchester sold a similar piece with a green stone, dated London 1902, in June 2007 at £1600. This example went one better, selling at £1700.
wealthy, hinterland, Mr Wise is naturally keen to see the wider trade in action in his rooms, but there was no stopping the private buyers. Two of them battled it out for a fine, 7ft 6in (2.29m) tall, George III housekeeper’s cupboard in oak which made £7500 against an estimate of £2000-3000. Two others fought over a Regency sofa table, mainly rosewood with satinwood crossbanding, one of them taking it at £4800 (estimate £2500-3500). The housekeeper’s cupboard had come
from Dalkeith House, a substantial former manse which became the Newcastleton home of the late hotelier and antiques enthusiast John Hall, whom many a dealer will remember attending auctions in the North West and the Borders over the past couple of decades.
In fact, some 60 of the furniture lots
came from Dalkeith House, guaranteeing fresh-to-market pieces collected by a man with a discerning eye if not a limitless budget. They included most items from across the furniture range from a 19th century mahogany folding towel rail at a double-estimate £85 to a substantial Victorian four-poster bed at an above- estimate £1250. Mr Hall’s contribution also included nearly 80 of the 240 opening lots of standard collectable ceramics and glass and his enthusiasm for postcards resulted in a 30-lot section which totalled nearly £7000. Here, local bias among North
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