Antiques Trade Gazette
9
cupboard bare…
guides about right, and if the hammer prices were not always wildly over, or sometimes below, predictions that is probably partly because all the add-ons pushed the final price paid by the purchaser up by another 35 per cent. There was, however, one lot
where Bonhams did appear to have pushed the envelope. The star of the Hubbard sale was a signed Beilby enamelled Royal goblet of c.1766 decorated with the arms of the Nassau Princes of Orange for William V to one side and an opaque white butterfly and Beilby Newcastle Pinxit to the other. At 12in (30cm) high, this was an imposing piece, published in the Beilby literature and one of only 16 recorded heraldic glasses Beilby glasses with signatures. An important piece then, in the Beilby corpus, but even so a £100,000-150,000 estimate was punchy and surely more than any Beilby glass has made at auction before. Bidding did not reach that level, for the goblet did not get away at the auction itself, although Bonhams negotiated a pretty swift after-sale to a private collector at £90,000, boosting the total for the sale up to just over £733,000 Beilbys accounted for four of the ten
highest Hubbard results. They included a pair of 10in (25cm) high, opaque twist covered goblets enamelled with trademark fruiting vines at £27,000 and a 6in (16cm) high privateer glass that combined an opaque and colour twist stem and was painted to the bowl with a three-masted sailing ship and the inscription The Providence Jon Elliott 1767. When last under the hammer at Christie’s in 1999, this realised £26,000. Guided this time at £25,000-35,000, it got away at £24,000. Another Beilby armorial glass, an
8in (20cm) high goblet, painted with a characteristic white classical ruin vignette and the polychrome arms of the Pollard family, went for £15,000, which was less than the £20,000-30,000 guide and the £25,000 that it realised when last sold at auction in 1998. But there were also glasses in
the Hubbard sale that outstripped expectations. The most expensive of the Hubbard colour twists was a c.1770, 6in (15cm) high wine glass with a stem featuring opaque white, blue and yellow threads. This outstripped its £8000- 12,000 guide to take £16,000. Of the 20-odd Dutch engraved
glasses that rounded off the Hubbard sale, the most expensive was a 6in (15.5cm) high plain wine glass of c.1780- 90 stipple engraved by David Wolff with a white horse in a meadow flanked by trees. It outstripped a £7000-9000
guide to take £17,000. Outside these three categories,
among the other types featured in the collection, there was keen demand for another privateer glass which sold for double the estimate at £15,000. This was dated to c.1770, was 6½in (16.5cm) high, set on an opaque twist stem and engraved to the bucket-shaped bowl with a detailed view of a three master and the inscription Success to the Eagle Frigate John Knill Commander. This refers to a 24-gun, 250-ton ship jointly owned by Camplin and Smith of Bristol and Manslip and Wilkinson of London. Early English drinking glasses of
baluster form have been selling strongly for some time and Mr Hubbard had a particularly unusual version among his examples. It was small at just 4in (10cm) high and set on an short, inverted baluster stem with a large tear, but the funnel bowl was engraved over the entire surface with leafy sprays, while the rim carried the inscription God Save the Queen. Dated to c.1680-90, Bonhams had guided it at £7000-9000 only to see it make £20,000. The mixed-owner sale that followed
the Hubbard offering included a small selection of 18th century English glass, among which was another Beilby. This was a hitherto unrecorded 4in (10cm) high tumbler painted with flowers in white to one side and to the other a thistle surmounted by a crown with the legend Nemo me Impune Lacefsit (No-one attacks me with impunity),
Left: a collection of Russian paperweights proved to be the most sought-after element of the mixed- owner glass sale that followed the Hubbard auction at Bonhams on November 30. Topping the list at £23,000 was this 5½in (14cm) oval floral paperweight plaque inscribed O F Grotkowskij.
Below left: early baluster glasses remain a very popular category with collectors. This massive 14½in (37cm) high funnel bowled example realised £10,500 in the Hubbard Collection sale.
Right: an 8in (20cm) high Beilby goblet of c.1765 from the Hubbard collection decorated with an armorial for the Pollard family, sold for £15,000.
Below: this 4½in (11cm) diameter faceted circular Russian paperweight of c.1870-80 from the Bader Collection sold for £10,500 at Bonhams.
the motto of the Order of the Thistle. A Beilby ale glass featured in the Hubbard sale, which realised £10,000, was similarly decorated. This example made £10,500. As mentioned,
almost two-thirds of Bonhams' second sale was given over to paperweights. If buyers didn’t warm to the larger of two private collections offered here, the 120-lot American consignment, the
smaller, 37-lot Friedrich Bader collection of Russian
paperweights and related objects generated much more enthusiasm,
providing seven of the ten top prices. This sale happened to coincide with London’s Russian auction series and consequently was well viewed by Russians, but in the event, said Bonhams, most of the lots were secured by paperweight specialists. Many of the most expensive Russian pieces were paperweight plaques, including the best seller, a 5½in (14cm) long oval plaque illustrated on these pages. Dated to c.1870-80, inset with a floral arrangement of dahlias tied with a white caterpillar and engraved in Cyrillic O F Grotkowskij, it outstripped expectations of £12,000-18,000 to take £23,000. The most expensive of the circular
Russian weights was a rare, 3in (8cm) diameter specimen of the same period inset with a yellow winged butterfly surrounded by dahlias and wild strawberries guided at £7000-9000, that ended up making £11,500.
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