Antiques Trade Gazette 23


Don’t forget to look in the garage…


Above: bursting with Art Deco style, this painted and gilt sign for the Savoy Hotel, measuring 4ft 2in (1.17m) high, sold for £1800. Below: Daum cameo and martelé vase, £7000.


ON visiting a bungalow just south of Knutsford for a probate valuation, Patrick Cheyne (15% buyer’s premium) had been dismayed to find nothing of any value in the home itself – but rather better things emerged when he was shown the garage. The pride and joy of the property’s


late owner had been an Austin 7 sports (a model commonly known as the Nippy) registered in June 1936. Bought in 1958 for £15 minus the


engine, it was lovingly restored, complete


with British racing green paintwork, and paraded at various fairs. Despite its now rather tired cosmetic condition it caused enormous interest when offered for sale at St Peter’s Assembly Rooms, Hale, near Altrincham, on February 26. With numerous potential buyers vying on the telephone, it fell eventually to a “must have it” buyer from London at £7600. Not only did the garage


much selling for under £200, but there were some individual gems, not least a superb Della Robbia twin-handled vase. Measuring just shy of 12in (30cm), and scraffito-decorated with flowering blue poppies it carried a range of incised marks including those for the decorators Charles Collis and Lizzie Wilkins. Estimated at £800-1200, it sold at £2600. Two pieces of French art glass from


different sources provided the top prices of the sale. Sold at the top end of its £3000-5000 estimate was a large rectangular pâte de verre plaque by Almeric Walter depicting a female dancer amongst foliage. Measuring 16 x 11in (41 x 27cm) and


wired for electricity within a reeded and patinated steel base, this was one of a series of designs produced for the Nancy glassmakers by the sculptor Jean-Bernard Descomps (1872-1948): it carried the signature Jean Descomps and A Walter/ Nancy. A Daum Frères wheel-carved, cameo


and martelé oval section vase was knocked down at a sale-topping £7000 (estimate £2000-3000). Standing 5in (12.5cm) high, and combining opalescent, green and amethyst glass, this lot was sold with its original retailer’s label dated November 4, 1901 when the price was a hefty £7.11s.


contain the Nippy car but also three velocipedes and a late Victorian/Edwardian bath chair.


Above: Moorcroft Wisteria pattern tobacco jar, £5400.


These all sold well too. The English-made ‘boneshaker’ c.1870 with its wooden wheels, made £2400, courtesy of a local enthusiast who organises the Knutsford vintage bicycle races, while two ‘ordinary’ or penny farthings sold at £950 and £2000, the latter for a bicycle marked with its year of manufacture, 1884. The bath chair, with a typical wicker seat, took £380. Two other lots are worthy of note. An


underrated lot in the sale catalogue was a Moorcroft tobacco jar decorated with


wisteria on a cream ground. It is an early pattern c.1912-14, and, despite a few nibbles on the screw thread of the jar, it was in good condition. Standing nonchalantly on the


sideboard of a modern flat in Altrincham, its owners, one of whom was anxious to return home to the Philippines, had been only too pleased to learn it might fetch a few hundred pounds. It sold to a telephone bidder after some determined bidding for £5400. The sale, which Patrick Cheyne considered one of his best in recent memory, also included what he called “without a doubt one of the finest Edwardian inlaid mahogany breakfront wardrobes I have ever seen”. With a pierced and


Above: a 19th century boneshaker, £2400 at Patrick Cheyne.


broken swan neck pediment and profuse inlay to the cupboard doors and drawers, it soared to £4000, selling to a local dealer. At a time when many examples will struggle to bring more than £200-300, this was indeed a heavyweight price.


Bidding spirals for Barnard’s cylindrical rule


TYPICALLY slide rules are linear or circular in form but on the Barnard’s Coordinate Spiral Slide Rule the logarithmic line is arranged helix-like on the surface of a cylinder giving a working length of tens of feet. It was invented by the Sri Lanka-based mathematician


Henry Osmund Barnard (1869-1934), who improved upon a similar design for a logarithmic calculating drum c.1878


by George Fuller. For those who care (or understand), it did all that the Fuller rule could but also: “The natural and logarithmic values of trigonometrical functions of any angle can be determined by inspection... while the products, quotients etc. of these functions by lengths or numbers, integral or functional, are obtained with equal ease...” These are desirable instruments and it seems it has been


some time since one has been seen at auction (although Christie’s did sell one for around £400 in 1992). The example offered by Stroud Auction Rooms (15%


buyer’s premium) at the Bear of Rodborough Hotel on March 6-7 was by W.F. Stanley, London and carried ministry marks. Estimated at £140-160, it generated some fierce bidding


in the room and on the phone before it sold for £2000 – thought to be a record sum. A white marble bust of the late 18th century’s “richest


commoner in England”, the novelist, art collector, critic, travel writer and politician William Beckford (1760-1844) was estimated at £1000-2000. It was signed by William Grinsell Nichol (1796-1871), best known as the artist of the Fitzwilliam Museum pediment. The Beckford Museum in Bath were strong underbidders


Above: Barnard’s Coordinate Spiral Slide Rule sold for £2000 at Stroud Auction Rooms.


for the bust but they lost out to a London landscape design company at £4100.


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