24 12th March 2011 auction reports Above: Zulu knobkerrie – £4500 at Wallis & Wallis. Right: Tsonga headrest – £2600 at Brightwells. War and Peace at tribal sales...


LEWES-BASED arms and armour specialists Wallis & Wallis (17.5% buyer’s premium) have long enjoyed their foothold in the tribal art market. Last October they sold a Maori


war club at £15,200 and on January 11 another lethal club was the star attraction. This was an unusual 19th century Zulu


knobkerrie – a substantial 2ft 1in (63cm) long and with the head finely carved with hexagonal scallops. Six telephone bidders and a number of commission bidders were keen to have it but it finally went to a bidder in the room at £4500. This sale, occupying a New Year


slot long favoured by the East Sussex auctioneers, was typically varied in its contents. It is worth recording the appearance of what is perhaps the most desirable of all cap badges – a rare officer’s 1902 pattern silver cap badge of the 19th Alexandra Princess of Wales’s Own Hussars.


Bearing hallmarks for B&P,


Birmingham 1902, it sold to a bidder on the telephone at a remarkable £1550. Tribal art provided the unexpected highlight of the sale conducted by Brightwells (17.5% buyer’s premium) of Leominister on February 9 when an African headrest with inlaid beadwork


Bronze and silver – with Chinese values


Roland Arkell reports


CHICHESTER auctioneers Strides (15% buyer’s premium) conceded they were not able to give an expert valuation of a Chinese bronze censer consigned to them by a local gentleman who had cleared his mother’s house in Cornwall. They were, however, confident of its considerable age (it was 17th century) and quality and it fielded interest from mainland China, Thailand and Hong Kong, as well as the UK when digital images appeared on the internet.


When it was offered without reserve on January 28, the bidding opened at £1000 before it became a tussle between English specialist dealers in the room and on the telephone, with the winning bid of £20,000 coming from one of them on behalf of a Chinese colleague. Two lots of Chinese silver emerged


from a house clearance in Oxford. A 33oz three-piece teaset by Luen Wo of Shanghai, decorated with trees and figures, made £1650 (estimate £600-


£800), followed by a 32oz teapot on stand by Wo Shing, Shanghai, which went to another Chinese expatriate at £1600 (estimate £500-£700). The sale’s Occidental highlight was a 17th century oak gateleg table. Tables of this type need something extra to generate bidding these days: this one was unusually small at just 2ft 5in (74cm) across and a winner just on its colour and patina. A telephone bidder overcame a commission bid at £2800.


decoration sold at £2600. African headrests – practical objects also imbued with supernatural significance – display great diversity and the multiple forms have long attracted Western collectors. This example, comprising two horizontal planes joined by a circular form, is possibly from the Tsonga people. Examples of this form are often held to be metaphors for women: the lugs to the upper ledge of this example appearing like the beaded earrings of a young girl.


Saying thank you with a dagger – worth £15,500


THE 18th century Burmese diamond- encrusted dagger, below, was the highlight of the sale at Cameo Auctions (15% buyer’s premium) of Midgham, Berkshire, on January 25. The vendor had received the 11in (29cm) ceremonial weapon as a gift for his work in the Middle East. The broad steel blade, believed to be


the original, was partly carved on each side with silver and incised floral scrolls. However, the handle, highly decorated


in gold, cabochon sapphires and diamonds, was probably re-worked at a later date. In good condition and carrying


an estimate of only £2000-3000 it generated plenty of pre-sale interest. Five phones and interest in the room


took bidding rapidly passed the guide price, and the dagger sold to the London trade over the phone at £15,500.


Gabriel Berner


Above left: 17th century Chinese bronze censer – £20,000 at Strides.


Right: 18th century decorated Burmese dagger – £15,500 at Cameo Auctions.


Cyclists and deltiologists in the saddle


THE sale at Canterbury Auction Galleries (20% buyer’s premium) on February 8-9 included property from a Thanet lady whose husband was a member of Britain’s cycling squad in the 1948 London Olympics. His collection of cycling ephemera included postcards bought on a cycling tour of Europe he made after completing his apprenticeship with the clockmaker Dent. Their sale aroused huge interest among both deltiologists and collectors of cycling memorabilia, with the result that prices were far in excess of their estimates.


Above: a Pugin oak dining chair – £1700 at Canterbury Auction Galleries.


A Devon collector who travelled to the sale was rewarded with two lots, one comprising about 480 postcards of mostly black-and-white topographical views showing cyclists and bicycles and including five First World War embroidered silk cards depicting the badge of the Army Cyclist Corps. It sold at £2000 against an estimate of £250-400. Another lot comprising medallions, medals and badges included two 9ct gold fobs, one awarded by Anerley Bicycle Club to E. M. Bowden for completing 153 miles in 12 hours in 1896, the other inscribed Wolverhampton Floral Fete Cycle Polo 1907. It sold at £620.


Chinese buyers continue to pay handsomely to repatriate works of art that turn up in UK sales. A Beijing on-line buyer bid a double-estimate £5200 for a porcelain crackle-glazed brush pot incised with bands of stylised archaistic dragons. A possibly more interesting example of global buying greeted a collection of Doulton Blue Children pottery. All eight lots, including a 14in (35cm) oval plaque printed with a woman and child in the snow which made £400, were secured by a Turkish buyer bidding on the internet. The most historically interesting piece in the furniture section of the sale, however, was a single 19th century Gothic oak bar- back dining chair designed by Edward Welby Pugin (1834-1875) for the Granville Hotel in East Cliff, Ramsgate. Pugin acquired the site in 1867 and originally intended to


create a terrace of luxury residences, but in 1868, seeing the project would not succeed as private housing, he turned the building into a hotel.


The chair was estimated at £600-800 but sold to an Essex telephone bidder for £1700.


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