22 29th May 2010

auction reports

Wedgwood flies the home flag as dispute dashes Kangxi star hopes

IT wasn’t how Exeter auctioneer Nic Saintey had planned it, but the opening section of the April 21-22 sale

at Bearnes, Hampton & Littlewood (17.5% buyer’s

premium) saw home-produced ceramics for once step out of China’s huge shadow at a provincial sale.

The day started well for British material when, among the glass, a 31

/2 in (8.5cm)

diameter paperweight set with five rings of canes in blue, pink, red and greens was offered with a £100-150 estimate. Had it been a common Continental, 20th century piece, the estimate would have looked rather ambitious. But it had something of the look about the much more prized Bacchus weights produced in the 19th century by the Islington Glassworks. Mr Saintey decided ’at the last minute’ to catalogue it as ’English, in the Bacchus manner’. At least two American collectors were happy that this was the real thing and one of them won it at £1000.

Among the ceramics, it took a late no- show to keep Chinese material from the star spot. With 24 hours to go to the sale, bids of up to £7000 had been received on a pair of 171

/2 in (44cm) tall Kangxi yen-

yen vases estimated at £3000-4000. At that point, however, differences among the family vendors led to their withdrawal. Providing rather unexpected compensation, however, were a Wedgwood Fairyland lustre vase, a Wedgwood black jasperware plaque and a Flight Barr & Barr presentation jug and cover that all went at around £4000. The vase, a 71

/2

Above left:Wedgwood Fairyland lustre vase – £4000 at Bearnes, Hampton & Littlewood. Above right: 19th century Wedgwood jasperware plaque – £4200. Left: one from two pairs of embossed and gouache bird pictures by Samuel Dixon – £9000. Below: Indo-Persian table cabinet –£5000.

little doubt that these highly-coloured pictures were by the mid-18th century Dublin artist and, against a £2000-4000 estimate, they were a buy for the Irish trade at £9000.

In the same section, the poor condition of an Indian-Persian hardwood table cabinet, inlaid with ivory elephants, peacocks and urns of flowers, held the estimate down to £1500-1800. The buyer would have to spend a fair amount to restore missing veneers and a crack to the back of the 173

/4 in (45cm) wide cabinet,

but that did not deter a Portuguese dealer going to £5000 to secure it.

Best seller by a distance was a Regency mahogany triple-pillar dining table extending, with its two additional leaves, to 13ft 3in (4.04m). It went to the Irish trade at £11,000, but this was £1000 below estimate.

Also going to the Irish trade, this time well above hopes, was a pair of elegant George IV rosewood card tables with rounded rectangular foldover tops, friezes with beaded moulding and tapering, turned and reeded legs. Estimated at £2500-3000, they made £5400. With plenty of private bidders at

Exeter, there was business to be done, but knowing what they will go for remains tricky, as evidenced in a couple of early offerings.

in (19.5cm) tall piece of

flaring square profile (shape no. 2442), decorated to the exterior with four panels in the Castle on a Road pattern, was a less popular example of Daisy Makeig- Jones’s style than some forms, but Mr Saintey had hopes of it doubling the tempting £500-700 estimate. On the day, US interest saw it sell at £4000. There was also US interest in the 131

/2

10in (34 x 25cm) 19th century plaque, finely sprigged in white and incised Apotheosis of an Empress. It had come to

the auctioneers with a large amount of modern Doulton and the auctioneers could give it a here-to-sell £300-400 estimate. More was expected but, again, not so much as the £4200 bid by a dealer to see off the American rivals. The vendors of the 10in (25cm) tall, 1813-15 Worcester jug bearing the arms and motto of Alexander Gordon, Fourth Duke of Gordon, had loftier hopes but had earlier seen these dashed when it failed to sell at London rooms against a £4000-6000 estimate. Of footed and shouldered form with foliate moulded handle, the jug had finely enamelled panels of a view of the family’s Deeside country seat to the front and the coat of arms to the verso.

It came to the sale with an unbroken x

family provenance, but the jug did have a filled chip to the cover and a filled firing crack to the spout. More conservatively pitched here at £2000-2500, it sold to a collector at £4200.

Overall, with a hammer total of £335,000 from the 80 per cent of the 550 offered lots which got away, this was not one of BHL’s stand-out sales and results among the 65 furniture lots – in which the success rate dipped below 70 per cent – were a reminder that the brown furniture revival seen at some provincial sales this spring is price- sensitive at best.

Nevertheless, although Mr Saintey described the sale as “a little thin”, he was quite pleased with the end result and certainly there were pieces to raise the pulse throughout, not least among the collectors’ items and works of art. At BHL, this section included a Japanese carved ivory okimono of a scribe and child on a 4in (10cm) wide base which took a five-times-estimate £2500, and a set of two pairs of those vivid and very commercial embossed paper and gouache pictures catalogued as ’in the manner of Samuel Dixon’. There seemed

A good George III burr elm bureau bookcase, with the standard two glazed doors above a hinged fall enclosing a fitted interior and two short and three long drawers below, made an impressive catalogue illustration and was a practical 3ft 9in (1.14m) wide. Nevertheless, it failed to get away against what appeared to be a reasonable £2000-2500 estimate. By contrast, the preceding lot, an early 18th century walnut veneer and feather banded cabinet-on-chest, also a practical size at 3ft 6in (1.07m) wide, drew interest from privates and trade alike. It was, said, Mr Saintey ’a bit tired and untidy’– or ’in country-house condition’ as the positive spin has it– but it was untouched, and attractions included quatrelobe burr-veneered panels to the two upper section doors and engraved brass hinges and cartouche locking plate. All enough for it to leave a £1500-2000 estimate behind and sell to the trade at £4100.

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