Antique Collecting magazine Dec Jan issue 2021

THE BEAUTY OF HALL CHAIRS

BOOK OFFERS

E A R LY W O R C E S T E R P O R C E L A I N

ANTIQUE

COLLECTING

DEC/ JAN 2021

15

XMAS SPOTLIGHT

‘Tis the Season...

Season ...

EXPERTS SHARE THEIR PREDICTIONS FOR 2021

ANTIQUE COLLECTING

The antiques our celebrities couldn’t be without this December

VOL 55 N0. 7 DEC/JAN 2021

Plus:

STEAMING AHEAD WHY MODEL TRAINS ARE GO

Drew d: Pritcharuld o Why we shots’ ‘fill our bo n with brow furniture

ESSENTIAL GUIDE: COCKTAIL RINGS AND WATCHES BEYOND BELIEF PAUL FRASER’S ODDEST SALES OF 2020

CELEBRATING A

Regency Christmas ERIC KNOWLES REVEALS EVERYTHNG YOU NEED TO RECREATE THE PERFECT GEORGIAN FEAST

ALSO INSIDE David Harvey is flushed with success

• New! Crossword and quiz

Solomon Islands parrying shield club, with a curved blade having a ridge terminating in a W, the shaft with a knopped terminal and pointed end.

Estimate: ÂŁ500-ÂŁ700

www.bishopandmillerauctions.co.uk enquiries@bm-auctions.co.uk 01449 673088

FIRST WORD

Welcome

For someone rarely out of a ra-ra skirt and fingerless gloves in the 1980s (if you weren’t there, or for overseas subscribers, try to imagine Madonna in her net curtain phase) it came as a terrible blow to discover the decade is widely tipped to be one of the antiques trends of 2021. If you don’t believe me turn to our experts’ predictions for the upcoming year on page 54, to discover why chunky plastic jewellery, gaudy neons and nauseating pastels are set for a comeback. It marks the final nail in the coffin in a year which we would all, no doubt, prefer to cast into Room 101 along with Zoom quizzes, sourdough and “next slide, please”. (Again apologies to overseas subscribers, although you probably had similar.)

To celebrate its demise we are bringing you a special subscriber-only Christmas present.

Print subscribers to the magazine can now have free digital access to our archive, and current issues, as they are published. To make the most of it all you need to do is enter your subscriber number at www.exacteditions.com/print/antiquecollecting, and then add your email address and a password. Your access will continue for the duration of your print subscription.

Anther thing we are happy to bring you this issue is a new puzzle page. Our lockdown quiz was such a success that we are bringing it back – along with a prize crossword. Turn to page 31 to get your little grey cells going.

As we know, Christmas is going to be a bit different this year. But if you are still intent on going the whole hog (possibly more in thought than reality), turn to page 16 to discover, courtesy of Eric Knowles, how a Georgian Christmas dinner table would have looked. And if you really want to do it in style, how about donning a cocktail ring and watch, which were all the rage in the 1920s, see page 40 for our guide.

Elsewhere in the magazine, Jo McDonald presents her guide to vintage model trains (a hobby that has boomed in lockdown) on page 32, and on page 64 Andrew Smith reveals a collecting guide to dolls both ancient and modern.

Enjoy the issue and very best wishes for a Happy Christmas and virus-free 2021.

Georgina

IN THIS ISSUE

ERIC KNOWLES

recreates the perfect Georgian Christmas dining table, page 16

FERGUS GAMBON

reviews two important collections of early Worcester, page 26

WILL FARMER

discover the Antique Roadshow expert’s predictions for 2021, page 54

Georgina Wroe, Editor

PS A reminder that if you want to make the most of our Christmas book offers, on page 24, or gift subscription, on page 11, you will need to let us know by December 14 to guarantee delivery by the 25th.

KEEP IN TOUCH

Write to us at Antique Collecting, Sandy Lane, Old Martlesham, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 4SD, or email magazine@accartbooks. com. Visit the website at www.antique-collecting.co.uk and follow us on Twitter and Instagram @AntiqueMag

Antique Collecting subscription

ROO IRVINE

on the antique decoration essential for her happy holidays, page 60

The Team

We love

This snowy landscape by the Russian artist Leon Gaspard (1882-1964) has an estimate of £8,000-£12,000 at Rosebery’s post-war and contemporary art sale on December 9.

Editor: Georgina Wroe, georgina. wroe@accartbooks.com Online Editor: Richard Ginger, richard.ginger@accartbooks.com Design: Philp Design, james@philpdesign.co.uk Advertising: Georgina Wroe, georgina.wroe @accartbooks.com Subscriptions: Sue Slee 01394 389957, sue.slee@accartbooks.com

£38 for 10 issues annually, no refund is available.

ISSN: 0003-584X

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 3

Contents VOL 55 NO 7 DEC/ JAN 2021

6

THIS MONTH

REGULARS 3 Editor’s Welcome: Georgina Wroe 53 Without Reserve: Lennox Cato’s guide to 18th-century dining room introduces the bumper Christmas furniture issue with its new quiz page and prize crossword 58 Saleroom Spotlight: A collection of taxidermy goes under the 6 Antique News: While this hammer in January Christmas is going to be altogether quieter, there is still much going on 68 Fairs Calendar: A tentative look the antiques world at events in January 10 Your Letters: This month’s 69 Auction Calendar: Timed, live correspondence includes praise for and online keep up to date with our new columnists and the tale of a the latest listings snuff bottle 11 Subscription Offer: Order a gift subscription by December 14 and receive a free book worth £65 in time for Christmas

74 Marc My Words: Marc Allum looks back on an extraordinary year while remaining optimistic for 2021

12 Around the Houses: A bedside cabinet by Charles Rennie Mckintosh makes headlines, along with a 16 Season’s Eatings: Antiques Fornasetti credenza specialist Eric Knowles unveils the tableware the best Georgian 24 Book Offers: Save 35 per cent on Christmas tables would have used our top suggestions for a festive good read 20 Making an Entrance: Alex and

FEATURES

THE BEAUTY OF HALL CHAIRS

BOOK OFFERS

E A R LY W O R C E S T E R P O R C E L A I N

ANTIQUE

COLLECTING

DEC/ JAN 2021

15

XMAS SPOTLIGHT

‘Tis the Season...

Season...

EXPERTS SHARE THEIR PREDICTIONS FOR 2021

ANTIQUE COLLECTING

The antiques our celebrities couldn’t be without this December

VOL 55 N0. 7 DEC/JAN 2021

Plus:

STEAMING AHEAD WHY MODEL TRAINS ARE GO

Drew Pritchard:

26 Saleroom Spotlight: Fergus Gambon previews two magnificent collections of early Worcester porcelain for sale in December

ESSENTIAL GUIDE: COCKTAIL RINGS AND WATCHES

Why we should ‘fill our boots’ with brown furniture

BEYOND BELIEF PAUL FRASER’S ODDEST SALES OF 2020

CELEBRATING A

Regency Christmas ERIC KNOWLES REVEALS EVERYTHNG YOU NEED TO RECREATE THE PERFECT GEORGIAN FEAST

ALSO INSIDE David Harvey is flushed with success

• New! Crossword and quiz

COVER

GAP Photos/Clive Nichols, Chateau de Chenonceau, Loire Valley

26

FOLLOW US

44

@AntiqueMag

40

29 Lots of Love: Christina Trevanion reveals a lifelong love of Liberty born out of Christmas trips to the iconic store

12

32 Going Loco: Model trains have never been so popular. Jo McDonald presents her collecting guide to every boy’s favourite toy 40 Party Faithful: Jewellery expert Andrew Campbell reveals why cocktail rings and watches are still all the rage

31 Puzzle Page: Put your antiques knowledge to the test with our Christmas quiz and prize crossword 46 Puzzling Times: Ever wondered what the Georgians played at 36 Waxing Lyrical: David Harvey is Christmas? May Geolot lifts the lid lushed with success after restoring a Regency loo 54 Future Perfect: 15 industry 38 Profile: Discover why salvage hunter Drew Pritchard is telling us all to buy brown furniture 44 Cool and Collectable: Paul Fraser uncovers some of 2020’s more unusual auction sales, including a dinosaur skeleton

32

Paul Peacock have high praise for the hall chair

50 Top of the Lots: A preview of upcoming sales, including watches owned by three Hollywood icons

experts give their predictions for the styles and eras set to make it big in 2021 60 Special Effects: Some of our favourite antiques celebrities share the decoration that makes their Christmas special 64 Hello Dolly: From 18th-century German dolls to a Darth Vader Barbie, Andrew Smith’s essential collecting guide

TO SUBSCRIBE PLEASE CALL OUR SUBSCRIPTION HOTLINE ON 01394 389957 ANTIQUE COLLECTING 5

NEWS All the latest

Married to the job WHAT’S GOING ON IN DECEMBER & JANUARY

ANTIQUE news

While Christmas may be rather different this year, there are still lots of events taking place to get us in the festive mood

ALL ABOARD Lovers of railwayana will want to head to Norfolk this month to board the Norfolk Lights Express.

From December 3, a steam train bedecked with Christmas lights will take passengers along the 5¼-mile (8.45 km) North Norfolk Railway (also known as the Poppy Line) between the Georgian towns of Sheringham and Holt.

Described by the Daily Telegraph as one of the UK’s great five heritage railways, festive visitors can ride in train no. 76084, in a Covid-compliant way.

Meanwhile in Buckinghamshire, the Christmas market at Waddesdon Manor is back from December 3 to 23, with the light display extended to January 31.

Up to 70 stallholders will take part in the outdoor event, despite the main house being closed.

Waddesdon Manor was built

by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild between 1874 and 1885, partly to house the family’s vast collection of antiques and fine art while playing host to some of Europe’s most fashionable families.

6 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

Above All aboard the North Norfolk Railway this Christmas Left Yuletide magic is still on offer at Waddesdon Manor

A London husband and wife, inspired by their worldwide travels, have launched an online antiques business.

Jo and Jono Pointer’s new venture, Pointers Antiques, specialises in 17th to 21stcentury pieces, with stock ranging from minimalist Alaska armchairs from Cattelan Italia, to a plaster bust by the Belgian artist Gustave van den Meersche. Jono said: “I have been buying, collecting and dealing for most of my adult life, before I decided to turn an obsession into a profession.”

Above Jo and Jono Pointer have started a new business

SPY WARE A pistol disguised as a lipstick is one of lots going under the hammer in February when the contents of the KGB Espionage Museum in New York City is put up for sale.

The auction, on February 13, will see the sale of some of the most important artefacts from the Soviet Union and Cuba during the Cold War. Among them is a replica of the umbrella believed to have been used to carry out the infamous assassination in London of the Bulgarian author Georgie Markov in 1978.

More than 400 lots will be on offer, including hidden cameras, Morse code machines, airplane radars, voice recorders and a variety of classified government documents.

The sale takes place at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills and live online.

Above right The lipstick pistol has an estimate of $800-$1,200 Right The deadly

umbrella is expected to sell for $3,000

Far right A girdle bag, 18th century, China © V&A London Right A falconry bag,

Did you know?

1755, Austria © V&A London

Far left Fernand Léger,

L’Engrenage Rouge (Nature morte en rouge et bleu) / The Red Gear (Still Life in Red and Blue), 1939, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2020

1Very modern

Above left Pablo Picasso, Composition, from the School Prints, 1949, lithograph on paper, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester © Succession Picasso/ DACS 2020

A major exhibition featuring works by 40 internationally-celebrated artists, including Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet and Pablo Picasso continues on show at a Sussex gallery.

Pallant House Gallery in Chichester is staging the exhibition, called Degas to Picasso, until April 18.

Of the 40 artists represented, work by Paul Cézanne, Georges Braque, Käthe Kollwitz, Marie Laurencin, Le Corbusier and Paul Klee, rank among the highlights, with all coming from the gallery’s own collection.

Since its inception the Pallant has received donations from Gladys Deacon, Duchess of Marlborough – one of the most prominent female collectors of the 20th century – and Michael Woodford, a former binman and school caretaker, who amassed an impressive collection of works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and the French artist and muse Suzanne Valadon.

Above Hans Feibusch, Narcissus, 1946, oil on canvas, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester © By Permission of the The Werthwhile Foundation

3

3 to see in

DEC & JAN

2Bagging area

In the 1740s, a lady’s bag would have included a watch, a snuff box, money, jewellery and, quite often, food.

The UK’s most comprehensive exhibition dedicated to handbags continues in London this month.

From designer handbags to despatch boxes and vanity cases to military rucksacks, Bags: Inside Out at the V&A until September next year explores our longstanding fascination with the ultimate accessory.

The first-ever made Hermès Birkin bag owned by Jane Birkin, and Kate Moss’s Mulberry totes will join older versions of the accessory, including a Pakistani embroidered dowry bag and an 18th-century French beaded bag.

V&A curator, Lucia Savi, said: “We are thrilled to display the very first ‘Birkin’ made for Jane Birkin which started the long-lasting link with the brand.”

The exhibition, due to open on November 21, is scheduled to reopen at the end of the second lockdown on December 2.

Above Hans Feibusch, Narcissus, 1946, oil on canvas, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester © By Permission of the The Werthwhile Foundation Right Judith Leiber

(1921-2018) Fabergé Egg evening bag, 1983, rhinestones, metal

Venetian finds

Below Canaletto, View of the Grand

A set of paintings of Venice by Canaletto (1697-1768) goes on display in Bath in January, the first time the views have left their home in Woburn Abbey in 70 years.

Canaletto: Painting Venice runs at the Holburne Museum from January 22 to September 21 and includes 23 views created over a four-year period, at the pinnacle of Canaletto’s career.

The Woburn Abbey paintings rarely leave Above Canaletto, View of the Doge’s Palace at their Bedford home, with the exhibition marking the Piazzetta seen from the Bacino (The Palazzo Ducale, and Entrance of the Piazzatta di San the first time they have been seen together Marco), oil on canvas, 1731-1736, from the since they arrived in Britain in the 1730s.

Canal, with on the right, the churches of La Croce, oil on canvas, 17311736, from the Woburn Abbey Collection

Woburn Abbey Collection

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 7

NEWS All the latest Call to arms

FRENCH FANCY An unsung heroine of modernism is to be celebrated at a headline exhibition at the Design Museum next year.

While the French architect and designer Charlotte Perriand (19031999) helped define the modernist interior and good design for the masses, she was often overshadowed by her male peers, such as Le Corbusier and Jean Prouvé. The exhibition, opening in March, will feature large-scale reconstructions of some of her most famous interiors, as well as her photographs and notebooks. Two years after graduating in furniture design in Paris, Perriand renovated her apartment into a room with a built-in bar, alongside a card table with built-in, pool-pocket drinks holders.

The exhibition also marks the 25th-anniversary of Perriand’s last significant presentation in London held fittingly at the Design Museum in 1996.

In a bid to boost numbers, visitors to a London museum will be able to dine alongside a rare and world-famous 15th-century armour when the venue reopens after lockdown.

The Wallace Collection is displaying one of its most significant pieces in its covered courtyard in which the restaurant is located.

The equestrian armour was acquired in 1867 by the Comte de Nieuwerkerke, who displayed it in his apartment at the Louvre in Paris before selling it to Sir Richard Wallace.

The Wallace Collection’s arms and armour curator, Dr Tobias Capwell, said: “The armour is a worldfamous image of the medieval European knight. Only three full equestrian armours made before the 16th

Safe house A Suffolk dealership is taking advantage of its several galleries to showcase its Christmas selling exhibition in a socially-distanced way.

Period oak specialists Suffolk House in Yoxford will stage the exhibition, with highlights including a Charles II fruitwood-and-oak chest of drawers, a rare 17th-century primitive oak table and a lateGeorgian elm, comb-back chair.

30 seconds with...

DAVID DOUGLAS THE NEW SPORTING AND MILITARIA SPECIALIST AT THE YORKSHIREBASED AUCTIONEERS ELSTOB & ELSTOB

How did you start in the business?

Top Charlotte Perriand on the

chaise longue basculante B306, 1929, ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2020

Above Charlotte Perriand, Bookcase for the Maison du Mexique, 1952, ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2020

8 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

I have enjoyed a life-long interest in militaria, nauticalia and sporting antiques. My passion for old things stems from childhood and was mentored by my grandfather. After then I honed my interest into military antiques. Although my career path led me into law, my early interest never waned and, on moving to the East Midlands, I became regional chairman of the Military Historical Society.

How did this lead to practical experience?

As the regional chairman of the Military Historical Society I formed long-term friendships with many

century survive in the world today, and this is the only one preserved complete, as originally made. It was meant to be seen in the open, in natural light and, for the first time in living memory, our visitors will be able to see it that way too.”

Above A detail from the armour once owned by the Comte de Nieuwerkerke Above right The armour is one of only three pre-16th century sets in existence

Prices at the sale, which runs until December 19, range from £100 to £20,000, with most pieces falling within the £2,000-£4,000 bracket.

Owner, Andrew Singleton, said: “Fortunately my gallery is large, with seven separate rooms spread over two floors so social distancing should not be a problem and visitors will have to wear masks obviously.”

The exhibition will include 80 pieces of early furniture and associated works of art, ranging from the 14th to the 19th centuries, with the emphasis being on good colour and patination, he added.

To receive a catalogue go to www.suffolkhouse-antiques.co.uk and click on Christmas selling exhibition 2020, call 01728 668122 or email as@suffolk-house-antiques.co.uk Above left The sale includes 80 pieces of early furniture and associated works of art

established experts and collectors and became involved in dispersing collections as an executor of several estates. I eventually dipped my toe into auctioneering in the early 1990s as a ‘hobby interest’ selling at Nottingham cattle market. This developed into cataloguing quarterly sales as well as freelance auctioneering for several salerooms and rural practices. On retirement from professional life, I started Northumberland County Auctions, offering antiques and collectables at bi-monthly sales.

What has been your greatest find?

One of them would have to be a unique example of a trooper’s Tarleton-pattern helmet worn by the Royal Horse Artillery – named after Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Banastre Tarleton who commanded the British Legion during the American War of Independence. It is now on show at the National Army Museum.

Elstob & Elstob’s next sale is of jewellery, watches and silver on January 16.

BANNER HEADLINE After the turmoil of the recent US presidential election, the British Museum announced the acquisition of a million-dollar artwork by the celebrated American artist Jasper Johns (b. 1930).

The 1973 iconic screenprint, Flags I featuring Johns’ favoured motif, was given to the museum by Leslie and Johanna Garfield – owners of one of the largest collections of 20th-century prints in the world.

The American flag has featured heavily in Johns’ work from the 1950s.

Since 2016, three impressions of Flags I have sold at auction for more than $1m.

Cash in the attic Dozens of fresh-to-market paintings, portraits and photographs owned by the 25th Earl of Sutherland, Alistair Sutherland, are going under the hammer next year.

The treasures, which have been stored at Dunrobin Castle, near Golspie, for decades, will go on sale in February at Bonhams Edinburgh. The 73-year-old Earl recently inherited Dunrobin Castle, which has been in the family for more than seven centuries.

His mother, Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, died last December at her London home aged 98, leaving an £18m will.

But ownership of the castle and its 120,000-acre estate passed to the new

Above Jasper Johns (b. 1930) Flags I, 1973, from a limited edition of 65

Below The whisky originally sold for £100 a bottle

Top The 25th Earl of Sutherland inherited the

castle last year

Above The attic is expected to yield hundreds of treasures

Aisle of Lewis

BOTTOMS UP FIve bottles of whisky are expected to make up to £400,000 next year when a complete set of Black Bowmore goes under the hammer in Hong Kong.

The bottles, released between 1993 and 2016 – each then costing £100 – will be presented in a bespoke cabinet made by the craftsman John Galvin.

Black Bowmore has been described as the jewel in the crown of the distillery’s malts.

The spirit was distilled in 1964 and aged in ex-Oloroso sherry casks. The first release was in 1993 when it was 29 years old, with subsequent releases as 30 and 31 year-old malts. A fourth release was made in 2007 at 42 years and, most recently, in 2016 at 50 years. SInce then Black Bowmore has gone on to be one of the most collectable whiskies in the world, with bottles regularly fetching many thousands of pounds each.

Chief of the Clan Sutherland, who was born minutes before his twin brother Martin Janson. Mr Janson was left only £250,000 in the will that his mother wrote three days before she passed away.

Above left Opulence is at the heart of the range Above right Peacock feathers reflect the art nouveau trend

Art nouveau is at the heart of one of several art-inspired Christmas ranges from a popular department store.

John Lewis’ festive offering also includes renaissance, post-impressionism, impressionism, pop art and the art of Japan.

The art nouveau range takes inspiration from the architecture, paintings of the late 1800s, with colours including peacock and animal print. Bar-ware also takes centre stage, with on-trend drinks trollies and gold cocktail shakers.

Magi mix The black King Balthasar, as featured in Jan Gossaert’s 16th-century masterpiece The Adoration of the Kings, is brought to life in an immersive exhibition at the National Gallery this month.

The London gallery commissioned the British Nigerian poet Theresa Lola to write a poem exploring Balthasar’s life, which will be played as visitors look at the artwork.

Early medieval legends reported that one of the three kings who paid homage to the newborn Jesus in Bethlehem was from Africa. But it would be nearly one thousand years before artists began representing Balthasar as a Black African.

Theresa Lola was the 2019 Young People’s Laureate for London and later commissioned to write and read a poem at the unveiling of Millicent Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square.

Sensing the Unseen: Step into Gossaert’s Adoration runs from December 9 to February 28.

Above left Theresa Lola, photo Hayley Madden Above Jan Gossaert (1478-1532) The Adoration

of the Kings, 1510-1515 © The National Gallery, London

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 9

LETTERS Have your say

Your Letters

This month’s delve into the postbag brings up memories of a snuff bottle and praise for our new columnists

Our star letter

receives a copy of Bulgari Treasures of Rome by Vincent Meylan worth £55.

Write to us at Antique Collecting, Sandy Lane, Old Martlesham, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 4SD or email magazine@ accartbooks.com

Right An inside-painted crystal snuff bottle, Ma Shaoxuan, sold for £48,000 in 2013, image courtesy of Sothebys

After reading the article on presidential memorabilia (Cool and Collectable, November issue) I wanted to share a photo I thought you might enjoy. Back in 1964, about a year after I emigrated to Arizona, our Senator Barry Goldwater was the Republican nominee for president. Of course I wasn’t yet a US citizen so couldn’t vote. However, I did like his campaign button ‘I’m for Barry’. A few years later a rather obscure candidate called John Anderson also ran for the nomination. He failed and disappeared from history, but his campaign button read ‘Anderson for President’. Put the two together and hey presto, I have my very own complete button collection.

Elsewhere in the magazine, the Chinese snuff bottle article (Snuff Love) was wonderful, as was Lennox Cato’s piece on Canterburies (Without Reserve) that I couldn’t afford in the 1970s, and the piece on tokens was perfect - I have 39. I do enjoy Antique Collecting and you continue to out do yourself each issue.

Barry Anderson, Las Vegas, by email

Left Reader Barry Anderson unexpectedly found himself in the presidential race Right Dynamic duo: Lennox and Christina have joined the team

I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy David Harvey’s column (Waxing Lyrical,). It would be great to have more from him.

Anita Hochstein, by email

Be part of the conversation on Twitter and Instagram @antiquemag 10 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

Reading your excellent article on Star snuff bottles (Snuff Love, November letter issue) reminded me of a memorable experience in the early ‘70s when I bought two bottles as a present for my wife thinking they were “sniff bottles” for perfume!

Having learnt more about the true nature of the bottles, I mentioned my new interest to the lovely lady owner of a small antiques shop in Fareham (sadly no longer there). She told me she had a snuff bottle painted with butterflies and a poem which, without a top, she could let me have for £10.

Subsequent discussions with the amazing snuff bottle expert Hugh Moss established it was by Ma Shaoxuan (1869-1939) an eminent turn-of-the-century artist and worth about £2,000.

I felt so guilty I returned to the shop to explain my good fortune. But the generous owner just replied: “I am so pleased for you but please tell everyone where you got it.”

Martin Willey, by email I would like to say you have made two great signings to the magazine in Christina Trevanion (Lots of Love, November issue) and Lennox Cato (Without Reserve, November issue). The best antiques magazine signing two of the best experts in the antiques business. I look forward to reading their columns in future editions.

Stephen McMullin, by email

Answers to the Christmas quiz on page 31

1. (c ) 2. (b) 3. (d) 4. (a) 5. (c ) 6. (c) 7. (a) 8. (b) 9. (d) 10. (a) TIN GUEST = Steingut. DROP A VENT = Davenport. (b) RED MALE = emerald. RESPITE ENEMAS = passementerie

d

d

d

d

C G HR IF I T STd ID M E AS Ad

SUBSCRIBE TODAY d SUBSCRIBE TODAY d SUBSCRIBE TODAY d SUBSCRIBE TODAY d SUBSCRIBE TODAY d SUBSCRIBE TODAY

d Subscribe Now! ANTIQUE COLLECTING MAGAZINE d

d

d

d

d

dd

THE BEAUTY OF HALL CHAIRS

d

BOOK OFFERS

E A R LY W O R C E S T E R P O R C E L A I N

ANTIQUE

COLLECTING

DEC/ JAN 2021

15

XMAS SPOTLIGHT

‘Tis the Season...

Season...

EXPERTS SHARE THEIR PREDICTIONS FOR 2021

ANTIQUE COLLECTING

The antiques our celebrities couldn’t be without this December

VOL 55 N0. 7 DEC/JAN 2021

Plus:

STEAMING AHEAD WHY MODEL TRAINS ARE GO

Drew Pritcharoud: ld

ESSENTIAL GUIDE: COCKTAIL RINGS AND WATCHES

Why we shots’ ‘fill our bo with brown furniture

BEYOND BELIEF PAUL FRASER’S ODDEST SALES OF 2020

CELEBRATING A

Regency Christmas

SAVE 33 PER CENT AND GET 10 ISSUES A YEAR FOR JUST £25* PLUS a FREE BOOK when you subscribe to Antique Collecting

d

• • •

Give the gift that lasts all year and save 33 per cent on an annual subscription Plus receive a free copy of Chiparus Master of Art Deco worth £65, for you, or a friend Order by December 14 to guarantee Christmas delivery

d

ERIC KNOWLES REVEALS EVERYTHNG YOU NEED TO RECREATE THE PERFECT GEORGIAN FEAST

ALSO INSIDE David Harvey is flushed with success

• New! Crossword and quiz

Subscribe today and pay JUST £25 for your first 10 issues rather than £38. Plus receive a FREE copy of our fully-illustrated hardback book Chiparus Master of Art Deco worth £65.* Each copy is packed with collecting guides and specialist advice. Don’t delay, this offer ends on December 31 (order by December 14 for Christmas delivery). The offer applies to new subscribers and new gift subscriptions only.

Only £2.50 per issue!

Offer applies to new UK subscribers only

*

Subscribe at www.antique-collecting.co.uk/subscribe and enter code: ACDEC20 or

d call our order hotline on

d 01394 389957 d

d

quoting code: ACDEC20

SUBSCRIBE TODAY d SUBSCRIBE TODAY d SUBSCRIBE TODAY d SUBSCRIBE TODAY d SUBSCRIBE TODAY d SUBSCRIBE TODAY ANTIQUE COLLECTING 11

AUCTION Round up

AROUND the HOUSES Online and in-the-room auctions resulted in some memorable recent sales

The Italian credenza smashed its pre-sale estimate

The credenza was made for the liner Guilio Cesare, where the card design was repeated

ROSEBERYS, LONDON A mahogany, painted credenza by the ground-breaking Italian designers Gio Ponti (1891-1979) and Piero Fornasetti (1913-1988) expected to make £2,000£3,000 sold for £4,400 at the London auction house’s recent sale.

Created for the interior of the Transatlantic liner, Guilio Cesare in 1952, it features Fornasetti’s card design, which was repeated in designs in one of the ship’s lounges.

A 10cm vase by the British potter Kate Malone Malone’s work (b. 1959) sold has seen a recent for £550, three price spike times its low estimate.

12

ANTIQUE COLLECTING

GILDINGS, MARKET HARBOROUGH A matchbox-sized Volvo, which fulfilled all the fundamentals of collecting, was the top lot at the Leicestershire auction house’s recent sale when it sold for £2,200 against a low estimate of £120.

The pale grey PV 444, The rare which was made by Volvo toy car Swedish toymaker Geno in the 1960s, came fulfilled every with its original box. collector’s Gildings’ director, Will Gilding, said: “The dream reasons for the high price boil down to the fundamentals of collecting. The condition was mint including the box – unusual as it dates to the 1960s.

“The car was also rare, with the Swedish manufacturer Geno being far less prolific than more commonly seen makes like Dinky. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, Volvo has a dedicated band of admirers and this auction had two who were determined to get it, although only one could drive away with it.”

FELLOWS, BIRMINGHAM

A detail from Piero Fornasetti’s playing card design, central to the piece

A brooch by the arts and crafts pioneer Dorrie Nossiter (1893-1977) sold for £2,425, against an estimate of £600-£800, at the Nossiter Midlands auction house’s sale was a pioneer on November 12. in arts and crafts Nossiter was born in nearby Aston, jewellery Birmingham and is best known her floral designs of coloured gem stones and metals.

An alumni of the Municipal School of Art in Birmingham (1910-14), her work is seldom signed or hallmarked and is often attributed to her friend and contemporary, Sibyl Dunlop (1889-1968).

The silver and 15ct gold, tourmaline, split pearl and gem-set brooch went to an internet bidder.

At the auctioneer’s designer sale on November 26, a 2006 Bordeaux Porosus Crocodile Birkin by Hermès sold for £16,588.

The Hermès Birkin is one of the most sought-after The iconic accessories bag is one of the by collectors, most sought-after especially the labels Crocodile.

The fresh-to-market amethyst necklace had its droplets intact

The necklace, which attracted interest from America, boasted old-cut diamonds

The Rennie Mackintosh beside cabinet was 122cm tall

DAWSONS, MAIDENHEAD An amethyst riviere necklace, discovered in the clearance of an inherited property, sold for £2,500 – nearly three times its estimate at the Berkshire auctioneers. While a Victorian enamel necklace, from the same cache, with a low estimate of £800 fetched £2,300 at the same sale.

Dawsons’ Rachel Hutchinson, said: “We were thrilled when we opened several cabinet drawers to discover boxes crammed with more than 100 lots of 18th-century jewellery.”

CHORLEY’S, PRINKNASH ABBEY PARK A set of seven arts and crafts dining chairs, c. 1900, attributed to W R Lethaby (1857-1931) in a design for Liberty & Co, sold for £3,000 – double its low estimate – at the Gloucestershire auction house.

William Richard Lethaby was an architect, designer, teacher and founder of the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Both Morris & Co and Liberty & Co sold versions of the Lethaby design. The chairs were reupholstered in blue and green peacock fabric.

The chairs were made at the turn of the 20th century for the iconic London store

LYON & TURNBULL, EDINBURGH A 1916 bedside cabinet by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) sold for £¼m in the Scottish auctioneer’s sale.

The cabinet, one of a pair, was made for the Northampton toy maker Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke who was the Scottish designer’s main client when he was down on his luck in the 1910s.

At the same sale a 1930 poster for the Felix Hotel in Felixstowe, Suffolk (where Wallis Simpson hid waiting for her divorce) sold within estimate for £1,125.

The hotel has since converted into retirement flats

CATHERINE SOUTHON, CHISLEHURST

AUCTION ANTIQUES, EXETER A set of bagpipes found its way home to Scotland after attracting worldwide interest at the Devon auctioneer’s recent sale, selling for £5,749 against a pre-sale estimate of £60-£80.

The pipes, dated 1909, were created in Glasgow by the celebrated maker Peter Henderson who started his bagpipe business in the city in 1880. The set also came with its original, velvet-lined case and chanter.

Auction Antiques’ specialist, Steve Ferguson, said: “Having been inundated with requests from around the world, we are delighted that the winning bidder was a Scottish private collector, who knew and appreciated the pipes unique historical significance.”

The impressive bagpipes are returning home to Scotland

A 17th-century oak refectory table with an estimate of £600-£800 sold for £3,800 at the Kent auctioneer’s live online sale on November 4.

While a similarly estimatebusting lot saw a pair of Victorian novelty ebonised tortoise footstools sell for £1,200, against an estimate of £200-£400. Catherine, who is a familiar face on many TV antiques programmes, donated the proceeds of the sale to the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

Footstools in the shape of two tortoises sped to success

The large dining table made more than six times its low estimate

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 13

AUCTION Round up TENNANTS, LEYBURN A signed pen-and-ink sketch of Christopher Robin by E.H. Shepard was one of the top lots, at the North Yorkshire auctioneer’s November 18 sale when it sold for £3,800.

The drawing was accompanied with a note Estimated on headed paper reading: to make £60, With [heart] and xx the collection of cookery brochures from Christopher Robin.

Both the sketch and the fetched £2,100 note were mounted in an autograph book compiled by Miss E.H. Shepard’s Joyce Cartmell in 1937. sketch of A collection of 1920s Christopher Robin catalogues, brochures and sold for £3,800 price lists, mostly from Fortnum & Mason, also proved popular, selling for £2,100 – against an estimate of £60-£80. Featuring colourful graphic design of the era, interesting items in the collection included the brochure Fortnum and Mason make Entertaining easy in your own home.

ELSTOB & ELSTOB, RIPON A pair of 19th-century landscape paintings by an unknown artist, carrying a pre-sale estimate of £300£400, sold for an unexpected £22,500 at the Yorkshire auction house’s recent threeday sale.

Little was known about the two paintings, including The robes were worn at the the identity of the artist, coronation of although both are stamped with the Edward VII and letters ‘IW RA’. Painted in oil on board, Queen Alexandra they are thought to depict views of Oxford in 1902 and are attributed to the English School.

David Elstob said: “They were bought by a London gallery which plans to research them.”

At the same sale, the coronation robe worn by Mary Violet, Countess of Guilford (1882-1947), the wife of Frederick George North, the 8th Earl One of a pair of of Guilford (1876-1949), sold for £3,600. landscapes by The sumptuous robe was made by the an unknown artist prestigious London tailors Ede, Son & which together Ravenscroft. made £22,500

14 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

EWBANKS, WOKING

Soviet advertising posters saw red-hot sales in Surrey

Seven posters promoting tourism in the 1930s Soviet Union close to trebled presale expectations when they hammered for more than £10,200 at the Surrey auction house.

Collectors from London and Germany competed online to secure the striking designs with an Intourist poster advertising tickets on the TranSiberian, estimated to make £300-£500, fetching £1,700.

The table At the auction house’s screen made six Asian art sale in November times its low a 30cm high Qing dynasty estimate in wood-mounted, table November screen sold for £11,000.

OLYMPIA AUCTIONS, LONDON Four 16th-century Syrian tiles hammered at their top estimate of £8,000 at Matthew Barton’s European and Asian works of art auction on November 18.

The 53cm-square Ottoman set was painted in the ‘Piyale Pasa’ style, based on Iznik designs from Istanbul’s Piyale Pasa Mosque in 1573. They can also be seen in the Arab Hall at Leighton House, which were, in turn, copied by William De Morgan.

Matthew Barton said: “The strong interest in the Islamic tiles demonstrated the continued passion for such exquisite early ceramics.”

The tiles came from the 41-lot collection of a European collector

THE PEDESTAL, HENLEY-ON-THAMES A pair of late Victorian two-seater ‘Portarlington’ sofas by the celebrated maker Howard & Sons Ltd., sold for £9,000, hammer, more than double its low estimate at the Oxfordshire auctioneer’s design for living sale on November 10.

Upholstered in red velvet, the 2m-deep sofas were both stamped Howard & Sons Ltd. Berners St, with one numbered 5595 9960 Furniture by and the other 18405 75. Howard & Sons, Howard & Sons is the foremost upholstery maker of the a great investment for today’s 19th century, was established in 1820 and collector moved to Berners Street, London in 1848.

We would like to thank our friends and clients who have supported us through a challenging, but ultimately successful year, we look forward to seeing you all in 2021

To consign for our 2021 season valuations@sworder.co.uk | 01279 817778

Stansted Mountfitchet Essex CM24 8GE

42 St Andrew Street Hertford | SG14 1JA

15 Cecil Court London | WC2N 4EZ

THE EXPERT COLLECTOR Georgian Dining

Season’s Eatings No one did Christmas like the Georgians. Antiques Roadshow stalwart Eric Knowles feasts his eyes on the most sumptuous meal of the Regency calendar

16 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

T

owards the latter part of the 18th century, the Georgian Christmas dinner, the centrepiece of the festive season, reached a point where its extravagance bordered on being an attritional experience.

Writing around 1770, one James Woodforde itemises a menu of ‘two fine cods boiled with fryed souls (sic) around them and oyster sauce, a fine sirloin of beef roasted, some peas soup and an orange pudding…’, which does not sound too excessive – until you note that his description is punctuated with the phrase ‘…for the first course.’

It is no surprise that this same year marked the birth of Daniel Lambert – the 50 stone behemoth who was enshrined in popular culture as ‘England’s fattest man’ for decades.

MY CHRISTMAS IN TABLEWARE

CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION However, rather than being remotely burdensome for those who hosted these prodigious feasts, Christmas provided an ideal opportunity to make a statement about personal wealth – not only by having the wherewithal to provide the spread itself, but by being able to present it all on a vast array of specialised serving and dining accoutrements, all of which would have been accumulated at conspicuous expense.

Opposite page The dining room at Christmas at Wimpole, Cambridgeshire © National Trust Images/ Jemma Finch Top Georgian gluttony

is made fun of in this satirical print from 1792

Left Georgian glass toddy lifter, c. 1820.

All images, unless otherwise stated, courtesy of The Hoard Limited ©2020 Far left 18th-century

silver toddy ladle with a 1758 George II shilling

‘Braythorpe’s four-point list of tazzas decanters, sucriers and piggenes, barely scratches the surface when one takes into account the additional jelly and custard glasses, salts, monteiths, carafes, bowls, sweetmeats, rinsers, jars, jugs, pepper sifters, servers, condiment bottles, cruet sets, patty pans, tazzas, table salts finger bowls and cutlery rests’

While my Christmas may be a more modest affair than those of my Georgian forebears, there are certain pieces of tableware that would warm my soul on Christmas day. First, on waking, I would love to behold the splendid silver toast rack (below) – a stylish addition to our dining room which is late Georgian in style. I’m a stickler for crisp toast on granary bread and my choice on Christmas morn’ dates to 1817 and was made in London by John Terry. With its six divisions, ribbed bars and paw feet with acanthus decoration it would be a pure joy to behold on any morning.

Next on my festive alimentary journey would be this stunning Worcester porcelain tankard, made in about 1765 and decorated with a black, printed design, hand coloured with an evocative design known as ‘Rural Lovers’ by Robert Hancock who joined Worcester Porcelain Works in the 1750s and engraved plates for their transfer-printed china.

As the light begins to fade, for my third choice, I have singled out an exquisite light baluster wine glass of 1740. It has wonderful proportions and is engraved below the rim with an encircling grapevine garland. Incidentally, the experience of drinking from an 18th-century wine glass defies explanation.

Finally, while I recline after the meal, my mind moves to chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

As with my tankard, my preferred porcelain chestnut basket (below) was made at Worcester at much the same time, but what makes this one just that bit more special is the warm, yellow ground colour.

1 Eric’s dream day would start with this 1817 silver six-

slice toast rack 2 A light baluster wine glass dated to 1740 3A Worcester porcelain tankard, c. 1765, decorated with

‘Rural Lovers’

4A yellow Worcester porcelain chestnut basket of the

same date would round off the day

1

2

3

4

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 17

THE EXPERT COLLECTOR Georgian dining This perhaps slightly tawdry display of largesse began when guests arrived after the morning’s church service – a time deemed appropriate to offer a warming hot toddy to visitors. It fell to the master of the house to prepare the concoction (warmed wine infused with fruit, sweeteners and spices) as its composition was considered too complex for the comprehension of an ordinary servant.

It was then dispensed with a near-magical flourish of a ‘toddy lifter’. These devices were bulbous in shape with a hole in the base of the bowl which was attached to a tube, the end of which could be closed-off by the thumb. It was merely a case of submerging the bulb in your punch bowl or serving rummer, placing your thumb over the aperture and then lifting it clear with content intact. By lifting your thumb and dissipating the vacuum, the beverage could be deposited in the intended recipient’s glass with aplomb.

Serving rummers were simply two, three or four pint-capacity glasses, a little smaller than a punch bowl. Such was the extent of the alcoholic concoctions available that several would be placed around a large reception room. For those who possessed a silver punch bowl decorative ladles with twisted baleen handles were available.

tapers until such a time as the room was bright as day. It was a vision; like the brightest summer sun at its zenith 2 Anglo-Irish cut glass frittering on the rippled waters of a clear lake under bowl, c. 1825 a zephyr; as the guests took their seats, their passing3 Set of six Georgian flat by made the flames flutter, and each was reflected cut wine glass rinsers, myriad times by the tazzas and decanters, the sucriers c.1775 and piggenes. As our repast continued, these same 4 Anglo-Irish kettle illuminations were cast through our wines and cordials drum standing bowl, c. the colour of each would dance across the (table) linen.’

TAKE YOUR SEATS

10 A Derby porcelain botanical dish, pattern 115, Large Flowered St John’s Wort, c. 1795

After a few moment’s conviviality, guests would be ushered into the dining room, where the demonstration of affluence and excess could begin in earnest. The first statement would be made by the fully laden dining table itself. This may have featured far more than a simple dinner service and array of cut-glass finery, as table centre pieces were a popular extravagance. These ranged from flour-and-water paste models of winefilled stags, to fully-rigged warships with functioning cannons. Other favourites included coloured (blown) eggs filled with scented water and pie crusts laden with songbirds or frogs. The intention of each was to cause a ‘diverting hurly-burly’ among your guests. After which it is time for the tableware to take centre-stage.

This description by William Braythorpe, writing in The Yorkshire Gentleman’s Review of January 1774, describes the desired effect perfectly: ‘Our party was brought up in to the dining room, whereby – one at a time – the staff lighted candles and oil lamps with

3

18 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

1 18th-century tazzas

1830

5 Irish glass fold-over

rim pedestal bowl, c.

1800-1810

6 Derby porcelain botanical comport, pattern 115, c. 1795 7 Derby porcelain

botanical tureen, pattern 115, c. 1795

8 Derby porcelain

botanical comport, pattern 115, c. 1795

9 Barr, Flight & Barr Worcester porcelain pedestal tureen, c. 1810

11 A rare Derby porcelain botanical dish of shell form, pattern 115, c. 1795

SILVER SERVICE There was a degree of contrivance to a set of Georgian glass tableware that meant that its composition surpassed what was entirely necessary.

Braythorpe’s four-point list of tazzas decanters, sucriers and piggenes, barely scratches the surface and when one takes into account the additional jelly and custard glasses, salts, monteiths, carafes, bowls, sweetmeats, rinsers, jars, jugs, pepper sifters, servers, condiment bottles, cruet sets, patty pans, tazzas, table salts finger bowls and cutlery rests, it’s no surprise that a full service would number several hundred individual pieces in its entirety (and this without taking drinking glasses into consideration).

In addition to the glassware, came the dinner service itself – another extensive array of porcelain or earthenware pieces from which the endless procession of foodstuffs could be consumed. And, of course, if you were really intent on doing things to their indulgent nonpareil, successive courses should be presented with their own set of specific dishes and bowls, including a dedicated dessert service for the culmination of the finest epicurean endeavours.

1

2

4

5

6

7

Christmas Fare 8

9

10

11

There were three main days in the Georgian festive calendar: Christmas Day for a large meal, New Year’s Day for present-giving, and Twelfth Night for the one remaining party. Certain dishes were essential to complete the festive table. Seasonal farmed bird meat was one – turkey for the rich, goose or chicken for the middle and lower classes. Pork products including brawn, were still popular, and game, especially roast, was obligatory. Mince pies were now losing some of their meatiness, as the division between savoury and sweet became more rigid and sugar became cheaper. Plum pudding was an enduring favourite, still served alongside the roast beef. In 1823, Victoire, Count De Soligny wrote: ‘This English custom of having a particular fare for this particular day is perhaps without exception the most universal of any that prevails in the country. Probably there is not a single table spread on Christmas day…that is not furnished with roast beef and plum-pudding’.

Twelfth cake

Such a service may have included comports – an import from the continent where they were used to serve stewed fruit in syrup. Having reached these shores, however, their purpose evolved, and they became a serving dish for fresh fruit or whole nuts, (distinct from sweetmeat dishes, which presented smaller, candied portions of the same).

And so, after hours of trenchant endeavour, dinner draws to a close and guests depart, fully replete and in the knowledge the only folk expected to work any harder than themselves would be those now required to deal with the washing up.

As well as appearing regularly on TV, Eric Knowles is chairman of The Hoard Ltd, an online emporium of decorative objects from the 17th century to the present day. For more details on its range go to www.scottishantiques.com or call 0131 235 2010.

Above right Isaac Cruikshank Drawing for twelfth-cake at St Annes Hill, 1799 Right Gingerbread

was a favourite at the Christmas table

One of the most popular foods of the Georgian Christmas was the traditional Twelfth cake. Traditionally, it contained both a dried bean and a dried pea. The man whose slice contained the bean was elected king for the night; the woman who found a pea elected queen. By the late Georgian era, the pea was replaced by a set of paper characters which were drawn from a hat. The characters were printed especially for Christmas, accompanied with jokes, rhymes or rude verses. Gingerbread was another staple of the Georgian Christmas table.

Early versions involved breadcrumbs, honey and spice but, by the Georgian period, it was made with treacle. It was long associated with feasting as spices were expensive.

Taken from the online course A History of Royal Food and Feasting, discover more at www.furturelearn.com

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 19

COLLECTING GUIDES Hall chairs

Making an Entrance Nothing sets the tone for an interior like a hall chair. Crafted out of solid wood with straight backs, their simplicity is back in fashion, writes Alex and Paul Peacock

The top hall at Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire. Themes from the neo-classical chimneypiece, designed by Robert Adam, continue in the hall chair which has the Winn crest in its centre ŠNational Trust Images/ Andreas von Einsiedel

20 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

H

all chairs are loved by collectors and interior designers alike for many reasons – not least because, serving no real purpose, they are largely decorative in style. In the main, rather than for hours of use, they acted as a calling card for what visitors might expect in terms of wealth, style and aesthetic from their host. Hence the elaborate splats, crests and emblems.

Their function in a main hall was to accommodate those waiting to enter the house’s more intimate spaces, with their straight backs designed to be placed against a wall.

Their austere, seemingly uncomfortable nature was also said to have been designed (perhaps apocryphally) to discourage servants from sitting on them. In 1803, Thomas Sheraton in his The Cabinet Dictionary, wrote the chairs were: “To be placed in halls, for the use of servants or strangers waiting on business.”

Alongside their robust design and clean, architectural aesthetic, the chairs often come in pairs; creating a pleasing symmetry when placed either side of a console table in a hallway.

Today, they can be used in pairs as bedside stands on which to put a book and a small lamp, while interior decorators place hall chairs anywhere in a house to make wonderful decorative accents or fill awkward spaces.

THE DIRECTOR

Chippendale’s hall chairs

Above right A pair of Chippendale period mahogany hall chairs c. 1770. On sale from Peacock’s Finest for £4,250 Above One of the Nostell Priory hall chairs (1770-75) by Thomas Chippendale © National Trust Images/John Hammond Below A hall armchair

from Nostell Priory.

Even though the chair has no bill or account confirming its maker, it is attributed to Thomas Chippendale © National Trust/Robert Thrift

Below right Thomas

Chippendale plate XVII of the 3rd (1762) edition of The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director

The first designs for such types of chairs appear in Thomas Chippendale’s 1762 The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director. In it, Chippendale suggested using hall chairs in: “Halls, passages or

Above Thomas Chippendale (1718-1779) hall chair at Harewood House, which features the Lascelles family crest of a muzzled bear Left The entrance hall at Attingham Park, Shropshire. The room was designed by George Steuart for Lord Berwick in the late 18th century © National Trust Images/ Andreas von Einsiedel

In his ground-breaking book The Gentleman and CabinetMaker’s Director, Thomas Chippendale presented designs for every piece of movable furniture needed in a modern household, including hall chairs. In the course of three publications, he drew up a variety of fashionable styles, ranging from English rococo to Chinese and gothic. The book was published in the spring of 1754 and, by 1755, an unchanged second edition was issued, which indicates that the initial print run of 400 had sold out completely. Between 1759 and 1762, Chippendale worked on new designs, which he published in a third, altered, and expanded edition in 1762.

In 1767, Chippendale received the largest and most lucrative commission of his career, worth more than £10,000 – to furnish the newly-built Harewood House in Yorkshire. Part of the commission was eight carved and painted hall chairs, each featuring the Lascelles family crest of a muzzled bear.

NOSTELL PRIORY Chippendale went on to design eight virtually identical chairs for Sir Rowland Winn at Nostell Priory, Yorkshire (1770-1775), each conforming to the “mature neoclassical idiom”; the Chippendale chairs have circular “paterae” backs supported on “altar” plinths.

The chairs were made in beech, lime, with oval backs centred by the inlaid Winn crest, ‘on a torse, a demieagle displayed ducally gorged ermine’, inlaid in oak against a black ground and within a beaded surround.

The carved back features a fan within a band of harebells and an outer bead, the back’s waist is centred by a patera between acanthus and above a fluted shoe.

‘Hall chairs’ austere, seemingly uncomfortable nature was said to have been designed (perhaps apocryphally) to discourage servants from sitting on them’ ANTIQUE COLLECTING 21

COLLECTING GUIDES Hall chairs summer-houses. They may be made either of mahogany, or other wood and painted and have commonly wooden seats.” He added: “If the carving of the chairs ... was thought superfluous, the outlines may be preserved, and they will look very well.”

Chippendale and his contemporaries were concerned with creating furniture to match both the architectural and social customs of the 18th century, including restricting the flow of guests through the house based on social status.

As they were also one of the first pieces of furniture to be seen on entering a grand country or town house, they had to pack a punch – demonstrating the owner’s wealth, taste and pedigree. The finest examples were immensely decorative with exquisite craftsmanship.

Gothic revival Between 1840 and 1900 designers turned to more than half a dozen earlier styles for inspiration.

The gothic revival is the first of several mid-19th century styles explicitly labelled “revival”. This gothic vocabulary gradually permeated all forms of art, including the decorative arts.

Chippendale’s 1754 Director showed designs with straight legs, tracery, trefoils and chair splats that form pointed arches, which were adopted through the use of gothic architectural ornaments.

The triumphal arched backs of his chairs were fretted in the romantic “Elizabethan” fashion of medieval window tracery. The look soon caught on, made famous in the mid-18th century by the author Horace Walpole, with the fashion promoted in the early 19th century at Windsor Castle by James Wyatt (d.1813) as surveyor general of George III’s office of works. The gothic manner was further promoted

by George Smith’s The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide in 1826.

GRAND TOUR

Above left Late

18th-century hall chair with caned seat and wheelback centring on a marquetry panel with the Hoare crest, in the entrance hall at Stourhead, Wiltshire © National Trust Images/ John Hammond Above right 18th-century oak chairs in the Great Hall at Ham House, Richmond-uponThames, Surrey © National Trust Images/John Hammond Above Close view of the wheelback centring on a marquetry panel with the Hoare crest © National Trust Images/John Hammond Left A pair of late Regency oak hall chairs, in the manner of George Smith or Richard Bridgens c. 1825, on sale at Peacock’s Finest for £5,500

22 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

Like many other fashionable furnishings, English hall chairs originated from the Grand Tour, thus following the form of the Italian ‘sgabello’ chairs that adorned the entrances of noble palazzi in the 16th century. Although this form of chair remained popular throughout the 18th century, all major English designers, including William Kent, Robert Adam, George Hepplewhite, Thomas Sheraton and Robert Gillow soon developed their own designs, and as the chairs were to serve a decorative, rather than practical purpose, many of the designs were particularly fanciful allowing the designers to give free rein to their creative expressions.

In Ince and Mayhew’s, The Universal System of Household Furniture, c. 1759-62, pl. 4., the authors suggest that: “the ornaments, if thought too expensive, may be painted and have a very good effect”.

George Hepplewhite designs for hall chairs from his The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Guide, 1788, pl. 14., stated the chairs: “which are made all of wood, either carved or painted. The designs with vase backs are new and have been much approved.”

FAMILY CREST With the explosion of wealth associated with the growth of global trade and the industrial revolution a new class of prominent families emerged, eager to cement their positions in society. Hall chairs, displaying the family crest, sent a clear message of a person’s status. While the chairs are firmly embedded in their 18th-century roots, the way they wear their history on their backrests ensures they will always be of great interest to collectors and decorators alike.

Today, when individuality seems to be coming back in fashion, these appealing pieces can be seen increasingly in both traditional and contemporary settings. Although rarely serving their original purpose, these wonderfully decorative pieces of furniture can be very versatile.

HAM HOUSE HALL CHAIRS A set of 18 sgabello hall chairs were one of the earliest furniture commissions by Lionel Tollemache, 4th Earl of Dysart for the Great Hall at Ham House in Richmond. They were supplied by the cabinetmaker George Nix (fl. 1716-1751) whose bill, dated August 1, 1729, recorded “£18 For 18 Hall Chairs painted and Varnisht”. The chairs are carved in oak and painted with the arms of the Tollemache Earls of Dysart, argent, with a fret sable beneath an earl’s coronet.

Each has a solid, waisted back, above a square seat with re-entrant front corners and a dished centre, on shaped and hipped front and rear board supports joined by an arched stretcher.

Apart from three mahogany stools, the chairs are the only pieces by Nix that can be identified at Ham, even though he supplied a large amount of furniture.

His bills to the 4th Earl amounted to ‘£430 13s. 6d.’ for some 150 items between 1729 and 1734.

Dumfries House in Scotland also contains a very fine set of Georgian sgabello hall chairs made by the cabinetmaker Alexander Peter of Edinburgh.

COLLECTING HALL CHAIRS Being relatively affordable and often having quite distinctive if not quirky design, hall chairs make perfect objects for collecting, too, providing endless opportunities for the aspiring collector.

The rarest examples are those retaining their original armorial device painted or carved onto the back: it helps to trace their history back to the original owners, and who doesn’t like a bit of provenance attached to a lovely antique piece?

As with any other antique furniture, some rules are universal when buying antique hall chairs: always look for the best designs in the best, unaltered condition that you can afford. Due to a combination of their constant misuse and delicate construction, many of them have

Above Yellow Drawing Room at Harewood House, image courtesy of the Harewood House Trust Below Detail of a

wooden chair back at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, one of a set of six early 17th-century sgabello hall chairs at the abbey © National Trust Images/John Hammond

Below left The hall at Mount Stewart, County Down is lined with hall chairs ©National Trust Images/Andreas von Einsiedel

SEE HALL CHAIRS Nostel, Doncaster Road, Nostell, near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, WF4 1QE. The 18th-century architectural masterpiece with landscaped park and gardens has interiors by Robert Adam, one of the first long case clocks made by John Harrison and a world-class collection of Chippendale furniture, www.nationaltrust.org.uk/nostell Mount Stewart, Portaferry Road, Newtownards, County Down, Northern Ireland, BT22 2AD. The interiors of Mount Stewart range from the splendid, monumental Ionic hall and drawing room to its beautiful staircase hall, www.nationaltrust.org.uk/mount-stewart Stourhead, near Mere, Wiltshire, England, BA12 6QF. Stourhead is home to significant collections of furniture designed by Chippendale the Younger, and paintings collected by Henry Hoare I and Richard Colt Hoare on their Grand Tours, www.nationaltrust.org.uk/stourhead Ham House and Garden, Ham Street, Ham, Richmond, Surrey, England, TW10 7RS. The interiors are richly decorated with baroque ceiling murals, with a handsome grained and gilded staircase, www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ham-house Harewood House, Harewood House Trust, Harewood House, Harewood, Leeds LS17 9LG. Located just a few miles from his birthplace in Otley, Thomas Chippendale created masterpieces of furniture for the house, including hall chairs, tables, sofas, beds, commodes, looking glasses, curtains and pelmets, www.harewood.org Remember to check opening hours and Covid-19 restrictions before visiting any of the properties. been repaired – most often, the backs and back legs – but if the restorations are professionally carried out to high standard this should not be of great concern. Most importantly, try to find pieces that appeal to your taste and you will always enjoy having them around.

Alex and Paul Peacock deal in fine English furniture and objects from the early 18th to early 19th centuries from their London showroom. For more details visit www.peacocksfinest.com ANTIQUE COLLECTING 23

CHRISTMAS SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE

Christmas BOOK OFFERS Stuck for a Christmas gift? Save more than a third on the latest titles – order by December 14 for Xmas delivery

UP TO

35% DISCOUNT

THE SLOW TRAIN A Railway Miscellany

By Peter Ashley ISBN 9781788840927 RRP £12.00 Special offer price £7.80

MR PERCY

Portrait Modeller in Coloured Wax: The Miniatures and Tableaux of Samuel Percy

By Ruth Ord-Hume ISBN 9781788840378 RRP £45.00 Special offer price £29.25

First major reference book on Samuel Percy, modeller of miniature portraits and tableaux in coloured wax.

Take an amble across the countryside with this book, which celebrates a time when our railway network was more than a permanently delayed omnishambles of overcrowded and overpriced trains.

THE BICYCLE

A Miscellany on Two Wheels

By Peter Ashley ISBN 9781788840941 RRP £12.00 Special offer price £7.80 Squeeze the brakes, sit back and coast downhill with this irreverent collection of cycling memorabilia.

DAVID BOWIE: ICON

By Iconic Images ISBN 9781788840965 RRP £50.00 Special offer price £32.50

The most significant collection of David Bowie images ever assembled.

ROLLS-ROYCE MOTOR CARS Making a Legend

By Harvey Briggs and Simon Van Booy ISBN 9781788841009 RRP £50.00 Special offer price £32.50

A stunning collection of cars from the earliest models to those of the modern day.

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is a luxurious book, beautifully designed and impeccably produced to the highest standards.

We will make every effort to make sure orders placed by December 14 are delivered by Christmas (Covid and post dependent). To order call 01394 389977 or email georgina.street@accartbooks.com 24 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

SHAUN LEANE

By Shaun Leane ISBN 9781788840736 RRP £55.00 Special Offer price £35.75

A comprehensive visual record of the life’s work of this renowned jewellery designer, known for his work with Alexander McQueen

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 25

ANTIQUES UNDER THE HAMMER In December John soon found himself browsing antique shops around the country looking for other examples of antique porcelain. He said: “I started with no particular focus but over time I acquired a number of platters and plates of American and English origin; a colourful assemblage that I kept stored away in various cupboards. Occasionally, they would be used on festive occasions but not otherwise seen.”

GROWING INTEREST

A Worcester junket dish, c. 1765, 23cm wide, has an estimate of £1,500£2,000 at this month’s sale (Ralph Kenber collection)

SALEROOM SPOTLIGHT Two collections of early Worcester porcelain from the collections of John Alchin and Ralph Kenber go under the hammer in London this month

T

he spark for every collectors’ bug comes from a different source. In the case of John Alchin, whose porcelain collection is up for sale at Bonhams on December 15, it was an unexpected Christmas gift 40 years ago. He said: “I was baffled when I opened that parcel from a close friend.

It was a colourful antique porcelain plate. My initial reaction was, “Why on earth has he given me this?”

He was a collector of antique furnishings and art and he was hoping that it would spark my interest in the genre. Eventually, his instincts proved to be correct.”

Below far left A rare, early

Worcester beaker vase, c. 1754, painted with the ‘bird and snail’ pattern, 14.8cm high, it has an estimate of £7,000£9,000 at this month’s sale (Ralph Kenber collection)

Below left A Worcester

mug, c. 1758-1760, 12cm high, it has an estimate of £2,000£3,000 at this month’s sale (Ralph Kenber collection)

Right A Worcester moulded creamjug, c.

1753-1755, 8.5cm high, it has an estimate of £2,500-£3,000 at this month’s sale (Ralph Kenber collection)

26 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

His interest grew quickly, a visit to the Ashmolean Museum was followed by a trip to the Royal Worcester Museum which became a “turning point”. Before long he had “graduated” to the dealerships of Kensington Church Street, in particular that of the legendary Simon Spero. At the same time, another of Spero’s established customers was Ralph Kenber, who died last year aged 95, whose taste was already favouring Worcester’s early polychrome ware.

Spero recalled: “Like me, Ralph seemed intrigued by this brief flowering of innovative models and beguiling decorative idioms, unknown elsewhere in ceramics, which blossomed fleetingly in the early 1750s, only to disappear forever within three years or so, as the factory’s products widened.”

Ralph had retired some years earlier from a successful career in the brewery industry and was evidently seeking yet another hobby to pursue alongside his badminton, tennis, skiing and chess.

SMALL SCALE John’s collection also favoured smaller, early pieces. He said: “The exquisite examples of early production from the Worcester factory of smaller pieces, such as cups, creamboats, jugs and teapots captured my imagination.

The scale of the pieces was so delicate, the decoration so beautifully executed and the colours so vibrant that I knew almost instantly that I would soon be acquiring similar examples.”

Ralph’s equal love of rarity of form and decoration are evident in several pieces on sale, including a superb ‘scratch cross’ beaker vase, c. 1754, painted with the Right A Worcester vase and cover, c. 1757-1758, painted with the ‘mobbing birds and owl’ pattern, 17.5cm high, it has an estimate of £1,500-£2,500 at this month’s sale (Ralph Kenber Collection)

AUCTION fact file

‘bird and snail’ pattern (below left) as well as the dry mustard pot (below), the early creamjug, (below left) and the beautiful quatrefoil lobed cup.

REFINING TASTE As John’s connoisseurship grew he finessed his acquisitions. He said: “Eventually, I became the proud owner of several examples of items that I found particularly appealing. The small bottle vases are a favourite as I marvelled at how the maker managed to create such delicate proportions with the exquisitely tapered neck. The beautifully fine decoration added to the appeal of the shape.

“Other favourites were the very early quatrefoil coffee cups with their raised flutes and lobed rims.

Small sauceboats and cream boats along with delicately sized teapots and teacups also dominate my collection.

I have always favoured the wonderfully shaped smaller scale pieces and in several cases have been unable to resist the temptation to duplicate.”

So why has he chosen to sell his collection now? He said: “I would much rather participate in its disposal than leave it to the trustees of our estate. And I am hoping these pieces give as much joy to subsequent collectors as they have to me.”

WHAT: Worcester Porcelain, the John Alchin and Ralph Kenber collections Where: Bonhams, Knightsbridge When: December 15, 10.30am Viewing: Bonhams, Knightsbridge, December 13, 11am-3pm; December 14, 9am-4.30pm and online at www. bonhams.com Above left A rare Worcester pierced dish, c. 1770, with basket-moulding, 27.5cm wide, has an estimate of £1,500£2,500 at this month’s sale (Ralph Kenber collection) Right One of four

quatrelobed cups, c.

1753, the front panel painted with a ‘Long Eliza’ figure carrying a parasol, 6.8cm high, it has an estimate of £1,800-£2,200 at this month’s sale (Ralph Kenber collection)

IN MY OPINION...

We asked Fergus Gambon, Bonhams’ director of ceramics and glass, for his sale highlights Is there any connection between the two collections?

Nothing in particular save for some overlap in their taste, both having a penchant for the smaller, jewel-like, early pieces from the factory. Both were customers of the same dealers and auction houses but never met, John Alchin being based in the US and Ralph Kenber in the West Country. Both collections came in for sale at the same time so it was the perfect opportunity for a Worcester-only sale, which provides the first opportunity for more than 40 years to see so many of the earliest pieces in one place.

What is so special about early Worcester?

What should collectors look out for?

The early pieces have a freshness and spontaneity which is very alluring. Both the shapes and the way that they were decorated were totally revolutionary and must have been quite stunning when viewed for the first time by 18th-century eyes.

The soapstone body enabled a new range of shapes, often with elaborate moulded details inspired by silver forms. The decoration drew inspiration from a diverse range of sources and created a new style unique to the factory. Above all, these are rare and beautiful objects which are certain to enchant new and old collectors alike.

Do you have a favourite piece in this month’s sale?

‘John’s interest grew quickly, a visit to the Ashmolean Museum was followed by a trip to the Royal Worcester Museum which became a turning point. Before long he had graduated to the dealerships of Kensington Church Street’ Far left A Worcester dry

mustard pot and cover, c. 1753-1754, an early example of the ‘honeysuckle’ pattern, 12.5cm high, has an estimate of £1,200£1,600 at this month’s sale (Ralph Kenber collection)

Left A rare Worcester creamjug, c. 17521753, with a Chinese riverscape, 6.8cm high, it has an estimate of £1,200-£1,500 (Ralph Kenber Collection)

My favourite pieces are from a group of four quatrelobed cups with delicately moulded handles, each painted with a characterful Chinese figure and a bird in a branch (right).

Despite there being four in the sale, they are actually terribly rare.

From where do you expect interest to come?

Established collectors should be enthused by the range of lots on offer. In many cases, the sale offers the first chance for many years to acquire such rarities. I also expect interest from new collectors inspired by the unique charm of these early pieces.

How is the overall market for Worcester?

The market is steady but price levels are lower than they were at the time that these collections were formed. Estimates have been set very cautiously, providing collectors with the chance to acquire museum-quality pieces that may formerly have been beyond their reach.

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 27

Our next Fine Art & Antique auction will be held on

Wednesday 17 th March 2021 Inviti ng entri es until 1st March 2021

CONTACT T: +44(0)1948 800 202 E: info@trevanion.com

w w w. t r e v a n i o n a n d d e a n . c o m

AUCTION CALENDAR

2021 JAN FEB MAR

13th - Antiques & Interiors

APR

14th - Antiques & Interiors 23rd-9th May- Timed Auction Modern and Contemporary Art

3rd - Antiques, Interiors & Books 3rd - Antiques & Interiors 17th - The Spring Auction

JULY AUG SEPT

7th - Antiques & Interiors

OCT

6th - Antiques, Interiors & Books 22nd-7th Nov - Timed Auction Modern and Contemporary Art

MAY 5th - Antiques & Interiors NOV JUNE 2nd - Antiques, Interiors & Books DEC 16th - The Summer Auction

E: adminfineart@hallsgb.com

28 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

4th - Antiques & Interiors 1st - Antiques & Interiors 15th - The Autumn Auction

3rd - Antiques & Interiors 8th - The Christmas Auction

T: 01743 450 700

W: hallsgb.com/fine-art

EXPERT COMMENT Christmas past C H R I S T I N A T R E VA N I O N

Lots of Love In a year of lockdowns, Christina Trevanion is yearning for Liberty in more ways than one

executed. Arthur Lazenby Liberty created iconic, original pieces, which drew inspiration from across the globe. He was a man of vision who had a thirst for foreign culture and eclecticism.

Liberty was born in Buckinghamshire in 1843, and began his career at Messrs Farmer and Rogers, a shop on Regent Street. After 10 years of service, Liberty decided to open his own business in 1875, with the intention of revolutionising home design and fashion.

With a £2,000 loan from his future father-in-law, he took on the lease of a shop on Regent Street with three staff members. Initially, it was an “Oriental warehouse”, selling imported fabrics and ornaments from Japan and the Middle East. He said: “I was determined not to follow existing fashions, but to create new ones.” As such, he championed upcoming artisans and gave them a retail outlet for their wares. Liberty swiftly became one of the most fashionable places to shop in London and the “Liberty look” was all the rage.

OPPORTUNITY KNOX

A

s a child in the 1980s, a trip to the shop Liberty was part of our Christmas. Both sets of my grandparents lived ‘down south’ and on the way to see them on Boxing Day night, mum would drive through London to show us the lights on Oxford Street and admire the stunning Christmas window displays.

I have a vivid memory of sitting in our old Ford Cortina, late at night, admiring the windows that flashed past us. They seemed to get more magnificent and increasingly extravagant as every year went by. The colours, the opulence, the feats of engineering – it was all mesmerising and a veritable feast for the senses.

Each of my sisters and I had a favourite window, inevitably they chose Hamley’s – but mine was always Liberty’s. It wasn’t just that it was consistently that little bit different, it was innovative, inspiring, rich and sumptuous. Not only did I love the windows, but I was also fascinated by the building itself. I loved exploring the winding, creaking staircases and peering over the balconies; it felt steeped in history, and yet had a timeless air.

Only later did I learn quite how historic it was.

HEART LEAPS My heart always does a little leap when anything ‘Liberty’ comes into my auction house, you just know that it will be beautifully designed and exquisitely

Above Christmas treasures await in the iconic London shop Below A Liberty & Co

clock by Archibald Knox, c. 1903

During the late 1800s, Liberty built strong relationships with many British designers: William Morris, Archibald Knox, Gabrielle Rosetti, Christopher Dresser and William Moorcroft, to name a few of the many collaborations the business nurtured. As well as furniture, fashion and interior design they were jewellery importers as well as manufacturers; the firm’s Cymric jewellery and silver and the Tudric pewter remains highly sought after in today’s market. Many of these designers worked in the arts and crafts style and art nouveau, and Liberty’s encouragement of them meant the company became associated with this new style. In fact, in Italy, art nouveau became known as the “Stile Liberty” after the London shop.

The fact that the pieces by arts and crafts designers were hand wrought and individual explains why they remain sought after today. Collectors are safe in the knowledge that each of the pieces they own is unique.

LIBERTY FAN The motto for the Society of Designers in 1896 reads: Head, Hand and Heart and gives us a good understanding of the ethos of the movement which Liberty championed. ‘Head’ for creativity; ‘hand’ for skill and craft and ‘heart’ for honesty and love.

As you can probably gather, I am a huge arts and crafts fan and I will be sad not to be making my annual pilgrimage to Liberty this December. But perhaps, this year, of all years, we should ponder the wise words on the clock outside Liberty, which reads: No minute gone comes ever back again, take heed and see ye nothing do in vain . I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and let’s look forward to a happy and healthy 2021, with perhaps a little more Liberty!

‘So my heart always does a little leap when anything ‘Liberty’ comes into my auction house, you just know that it will be beautifully designed and exquisitely executed’ ANTIQUE COLLECTING 29

1

2

3

4

5

6

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

Puzzle TIME

Put your feet up with our antiques crossword and quiz. The first three correct grids will win a book worth £25

2 When was the first Christmas card printed? (a) 1841 (b) 1843 (c) 1845 (d) 1847.

3 What was depicted on that card? (a) a robin (b) a winter’s scene (c) the Nativity, (d) a Victorian family-dinner celebration.

4 Sheet Nativity scenes inspired (a) model theatres (b) cut-out figures in magazines (c) cigarette-cards (d) nursery wallpaper.

5 Which silversmith created the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ surprise boxes? (a) Peter Fabergé (b) Georg Jensen (c) Stuart Devlin (d) Robert Garrard.

10 A monteith is (a) a bowl used to cool wine glasses (b) a box to store false teeth (c) a knot developed during Montgomery’s North-African campaign (d) a Scottish jelly mould.

Finally, here are some anagrams TIN GUEST, DROP A VENT, RED MALE, RESPITE ENEMAS Rearrange them to form, (a) a precious gem (b) a small desk (c) German earthenware with a lead glaze (d) French ornamental fringes or braids.

For the answers turn to page 10.

10

11

12

13

14 15

16 17

18 19

Down

6 The French invention, papier mâché is thought to have been introduced to the UK in (a) the 1630s (b) the 1650s (c) the 1670s (d) the 1690s.

9 Which of the following was a weaver of 19th-century bookmarks and silk-pictures? (a) Strass (b) Syng (c) Sprimont (d) Stevens.

9

1. Wall-light with a candle holder and back-plate. (6) 6. Ornamentation raised above the surrounding surface. (6) 7. European city, site of the porcelain factory founded in 1719 by Claudius Innocentius Du Paquier. (6) 8. _____ hen. A pewter Scottish chalice. (6) 10. A knot used in the manufacture of Persian carpets. (5) 12. A shady, garden enclosure, as in the title of a well-known Burne-Jones painting. (5) 15. Standard monetary unit of Equatorial Guinea issued in 1975 and reissued under a different name five years later, some of the bank notes of which are very collectable. (6) 17. Another European city, site of the soft-paste porcelain factory founded in 1763. (The mark was a blue ‘Z’.) (6) 18. A thin liquid (slip) coating of clay applied to pottery. (6) 19. A type of outmoded cupboard holding food and drink to be consumed in the bedchamber at night. (6)

1 The picture (right) appeared on the front of which 1944 Christmas service publication? (a) Victory (b) Parade (c) Union Jack (d) The Navy

8 The 18th and 19th-century pottery border pattern with a Chinese influence of trellis, butterfly and pomegranate design is called (a) Flavin (b) Fitzhugh (c) Fouquet (d) Fragonard?

8

Clues Across

Christmas Quiz

7 A purdonium was a type of (a) coal-scuttle (b) basket for carrying domestic cats (c) hat-stand (d) single-decanter locking device?

7

Send your answers to Crossword, Antique Collecting magazine, Sandy Lane, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 4SD, UK. Photocopies are also acceptable, or email your answer to: magazine@ accartbooks. com. The first three opened on December 20 will win a copy of 100 British Chairs by Adam Bowett, worth £25.

1. S ite of the 1756 factory (transferred from Vincennes) producing highly-coloured porcelain decorated with paintings enclosed in in panels. (6) 2. The shape of a double curve hence, for example, an _____ bowl. (4) 3. The muse of love poetry and the subject of an 1870 work by Sir Edward John Poynter. (5) 4. A form of medieval (and later) spoon with a faceted stem.

(4-3) 5. Yet another European city, and where Giuseppe and Francesco Vezzi started a hard-paste porcelain factory in 1720. (6) 9. Gold coin instituted by Philippe IV of France. (4, 1, 2) 11. Michael _____ (dates thought to be 1734-1811). Painter of pottery and of white and coloured glass and who worked in Bristol around 1755. (6) 13. Description of sumptuously and lavishly decorated objects, furniture etc. (6) 14. The metallic frame of a clock or watch-glass. (5) 16. _____ cup. Usually a small silver goblet on a high stem.(4)

Finally: Rearrange the letters in the highlighted squares to form the name of William ________ (1705-1780) famous for his discovery and use of Cornish China-clay and the formation of a company producing porcelain in Bristol.

Our crossword and quiz compiler is Peter Wade-Wright.

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 31

COLLECTING GUIDES Model trains

The 60th birthday of the miniature railway in Cassiobury Park, Watford, image Shutterstock

GOING LOCO

The pandemic has seen the interest in model trains boom. Specialist collector Jo McDonald reflects on what will be on many big boys’ Christmas list this year

M

odel railway maker Hornby saw its sales surge by 33 per cent in the six months to the end of September, as more people took up hobbies in lockdown. It seems that in times of adversity – and boredom – many of us retreat into the familiar bubble of nostalgia.

Peco, which makes tracks and scenery, is

32 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

Right Hornby 0 gauge,

early GN (Great Northern) No.1, passenger set with an 0-4-0 locomotive and tender, in GN green, No.2710, clockwork, sold for £320

struggling to keep up with demand. And hobby shops, and auction houses, have seen a huge increase in customers.

Hattons Model Railway’s managing director, Richard Davies, told The Guardian: “The whole crisis has prompted people to take a look at how they use their time – people think they’ve been spending too much time at work, and now they want to make the model railway that’s been on their mind for the last 20 years.”

FULL STEAM AHEAD Today, the toy industry is a huge goliath, continually evolving and changing. Although the size of the business has greatly increased, there have been toys of all forms

Collecting model trains

for many centuries. Crude playthings fashioned from wood, stone and cloth were superseded in line with economic progress, developments in manufacture and improvements in social standards.

One of the most popular children’s toys has always been trains, greatly aided in the minds of little boys with the rapid growth of the rail network during the 1840s. Initially, materials choice was limited to wood or metals such as tinplate and iron to create a fixed piece rolled along the floor or pulled by a piece of attached string with added ‘Choo-choo’ noise provided by an excited child.

Johann Andreas Issmayer of Nuremberg launched a brand-new clockwork train in 1866 to great acclaim and the moving train was born.

During the Victorian period trains fell into several categories: Live steam, which was incredibly expensive, only affordable to the privileged few.

Cheaper versions such as the ‘Birmingham Dribbler’, a pull along alloy, hollow metal train were produced in the West Country in a variety of sizes and shapes.

Penny Toys in lead, tin and clockwork produced en masse for general consumption to those families who could afford a birthday or Christmas treat for their little ones.

• • •

FESTIVE BOOM The importance of Christmas during this early period did much for the toy industry as a whole. Germany took the lead, with elaborate decorations, traditions and the giving of gifts. Popularity, and therefore, demand grew quickly in Victorian Britain, where the vast number of imports from German toy makers were eagerly accepted.

Did you know?

If you want to start collecting trains or add to your existing branch then doing your research will always pay dividends. Don’t be afraid to ask the seller or auction house plenty of questions; reputable sellers should be only too happy to provide an accurate description.

Look out for: • Confirmation of age (even approximate decade) • Makers or country of origin • Materials used • Identifying makers • Restoration (if any has been completed, and if so what?)

• Receipts outlining the above, plus purchase price and seller’s details.

Dedicated auction houses produce catalogues with full descriptions and often have the advantage of photographs, or if their websites have auction history these could be invaluable as a reference point.

Rod Stewart recently told Railway Modeller magazine he spent two decades making a 125ft by 23ft model of a city with facilities for both steam and diesel traction, and a power station.

Above LMS Patriot Class

5XP 4-6-0, Duke of Sutherland 5541. OO gauge, 1979. All images unless otherwise stated courtesy of Vectis Right An early example

of a Marklin HO gauge, scale model railway railbus, made for threerail operation, sold for £220

Below Marklin

railwayman HO gauge, three-rail E800 4-4-0 locomotive and tender LMS brown, sold for £21,000

In 1891, Marklin working from the southern German town of Göppingen, exhibited a brand-new innovation at the world-famous Leipzig Toy Fair; a standardised track series, all in the same scale. This system enabled you to purchase track, locomotives, rolling stock and accessories all in one fit. Three separate scales were offered, entitled simply 1, 2 and 3 with models in painted colours on soldered tinplate.

Competitors such as Gebruder Bing based in Nuremberg, where quick to respond to this invention.

Bing was the dominant force in all toy production at this time, boasting a workforce of over 5,000, they could not rest on their laurels and quickly brought out a train ‘series’ too.

As developments in lithographic printing continued, its application to model trains meant that brighter colours with more realistic detailing appeared. The downside to this thin sheet metal was that it was not as robust and often became brittle, so finding excellent examples today is rare.

‘People have been spending too much time at work, and now want to make the model railway that’s been on their mind for the last 20 years’ ANTIQUE COLLECTING 33

COLLECTING GUIDES Model trains

HORNBY CLASSICS

WAR TIME The onset of WWI changed everything. The German domination of the toy market fell as patriotic parents were encouraged to ‘Buy British’ and UK manufacturers geared up to capture the market share. Initially they did this well, filling the void with one of the best at this being W J Basset-Lowke. They previously collaborated with Gebruder Bing, by commissioning them to make the track and Bassett-Lowke themselves produced the smaller fittings and small-scale pieces to keep down costs. With this experience under its belt, BassettLowke continued to make model trains. It employed the services of a master of engineering, Henry Greenly, to apply the same design principles to model trains as he had to the real thing. Scale was another consideration, their initial partnership with Bing had led to a table top series for collectors which had not been an instant success. This layout was then re-worked much more successfully by Bassett-Lowke into OO and HO scale.

They then marketing these as ‘train sets’ and added a further O gauge, which proved the most popular.

Staying on track

Collecting is very emotive, so try not to get drawn into buying a train, or set, that is described as ‘rare’ or ‘the last one’ without knowing that it is.

If fuller information cannot be provided, proceed with caution. Investigate as much as you can, read reference books, visit museums, auctions, toy fairs and train shops and view and handle as many pieces as possible. Websites, such as www.themodelrailwayclub.org, can be a great source of information.

When viewing the train, check if everything adds up. Is it, for example a mishmash of pieces from different eras?

Most valuable items will generally be from the early years of production, in excellent condition and with their original boxes. Some of the most expensive and rare older models are those by US producer Lionel, with some selling in excess of £200,000.

If you prefer newer train models, the most expensive tend to be in larger scales such as O gauge or custom built, limited-edition models, where the sky is the limit on prices.

34 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

Above right Hornby O gauge rare export SAR/ SAS (South African) No.2 mixed goods set with a 4-4-2 tank locomotive in SAR/SAS maroon No.6027, sold for £3,400 Above British Rail Class 37 No. 37130, 1977 Below right Triang/Rovex

OO gauge group of train sets sold for £60

The name eternally associated with model train collecting is that of ‘Hornby’, named after its founder Frank Hornby (1863-1936), a provisions dealer from Liverpool. He began in 1901 with a patent to protect an invention he called Improvements in Toy or Educational Devices for Children and Young People. Hornby continued to develop the Hornby brand and, with the amalgamation of the four big railway companies in 1923, started to follow with smaller-scale versions.

These included LMS (London Midland Scottish Railway), LNER (London North Eastern Railway), followed by GWR (Great Western Railway) in 1926, with the last company SR (Southern Railway) joining in 1928.

Over the next 12 years, the system grew to cover trains, rolling stock and accessories, in fact everything that the railway playing (and paying) enthusiast could want. Bright colours were used to appeal to a younger audience although many of the colours did not represent the real railways.

ROLLING AHEAD In developing the Hornby range, the company looked at its competitors and the general market before introducing the new Hornby Dublo trains, which hit the shelves in 1938. These new sets in 00 gauge (half 0 gauge in size) had cast metal bodies rather than pressed metal, and the buildings were made of wood. With the strength of Hornby’s marketing expertise behind it they sold phenomenally well, in fact, the launch was so successful that Hornby could not keep up with demand!

However, war clouds loomed on the horizon and by October 1941 all metal toy production had ceased by law and like most of the toy producers at the time, the factory was transferred over to essential war work.

After the war, the factory resumed production with the addition of some items sold from pre-war production (frozen stock). After six hard years of war the country was now bankrupt and the drive was for export to earn revenue. Many items were shipped to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand with the 0 gauge written in British English – whereas in pre-war days Hornby marked trains in the lettering of the countries the items were destined for.

GOLDEN YEARS In response to the booming interest from train enthusiasts, the 1920s saw several new dedicated publications, Model Railway News and Model Railway Constructor among them, with the emphasis on design and construction. Children still marvelled at the bright colours, noise and movement of the toys, but for adults, many of which avidly followed the real railways, realism and precision was vital.

In Europe, the industry was rebuilding and manufacturers such as Carette, Noch and Wilesco continued to create magnificent editions. The US experimented much more and makers such as Ives, Lionel and Bachmann brought out novelty sets to capture attention.

New players such as Rivarossi (Italy), Fleischmann (Germany), Wrenn (UK) and Rovex Triang (part of the British Lines Group) forged ahead leaving Hornby in their wake. An expert in plastic toys, Rovex Triang used its experience when marketing plastic bodied trains, made in their factory in Kent. These became a cheaper alternative to the more traditional Hornby.

CHANGING TASTES

Above Marklin for Bassett-Lowke, 0 gauge, in LMS black, 4-6-0, Silver Jubilee locomotive and tender No.5552, sold for £5,200 Right Hornby 0 gauge, in

LMS maroon, No.623, with an 0-4-0 tank, loco, clockwork, sold for £60

Below right Hornby

O gauge, early tank locomotive in LNER green, No.1, 0-4-0, clockwork, sold for £120

KNOW YOUR GAUGES On real railways, as well as model trains, gauge refers to the distance between the outside rails of the track.

Before WWII, German manufacturers began to produce railway models to the scale of 3.5mm to 1ft, or half the size of O gauge. This scale was referred to as ‘half-O’ or HO scale. It remains the most popular railway modelling scale used throughout the world, with the exception of the UK. The UK uses HO gauge track, but with everything else modelled to a scale of 4mm:1ft because of the UK’s restricted loading gauge. Most British rolling stock in HO scale looked small in comparison to its continental counterparts and it was difficult to fit mechanisms into the smaller prototypes because of the motor and gearbox technology of the time.

The UK standard was set that rolling stock would be produced to a track gauge of 16.5mm (HO), but everything else would be increased by 0.5mm from 3.5mm:1ft to 4mm:1ft scale. This means that ‘OO’ is a ‘narrow gauge’ because the spacing between the track isn’t correct. Model railway manufacturer, Hornby, produced its ‘Dublo’ range, cementing the scale in the nation’s heart.

HO is to a scale of 3.5mm to 1ft (a ratio of 1:87) OO is to a scale of 4mm to 1ft (a ratio of 1:76). Both OO and HO use the same gauge of track (the distance between the two rails).

The toy market is fickle and during the 1960s children’s wish lists changed. This was the era of the space race and toys inspired by television programmes. The 1970s brought Star Wars, interactive TV and video games; how could the humble train world keep up?

The specification of a large part of Hornby’s range was upgraded with finer-scale wheels, wire handrails on locomotives and high definition printing of logos. Changes taking place on British Railways and privatisation of the railways in the 1980s saw several new eye-catching liveries that were eagerly modelled

by Hornby. Later additions included Harry Potter series and a limited-edition set for the 2012 London Olympics.

Jo McDonald is a specialist at Stockton-on-Tees auctioneers Vectis, which holds a monthly model train sale, the next of which is on December 14, for more details go to www.vectis.co.uk ANTIQUE COLLECTING 35

EXPERT COMMENT David Harvey somewhat limited toilet facilities.

Sir John Harington invented the first flushing toilet for himself and for his godmother, Queen Elizabeth I, in 1596. When Harington published a book describing his invention, he was roundly chided by peers, embarrassing him to the point of retirement from plumbing. His two toilets were the only ones he ever produced. The next water closet would not be seen for 200 years when it was introduced by Alexander Cummings in 1775. This event would mark the very beginnings of the modern bathroom. This is not to say that toilets, or indeed bathrooms, were common fixtures in Regency homes. They were very much the exception to the rule, owned by only a very few more forward-thinking, wealthy elite. By the 1780s, they were becoming common in upper class homes, although they certainly were not cheap. By 1797, Joseph Bramah, who opened a showroom at 124, Piccadilly, in the 1780s, claimed to have sold over 6,000 closets. I have no idea how much this one would have cost to acquire new but I feel it was probably very much an upper/middle-class object at that time.

LOO WITH A VIEW

Waxing lyrical

I

While 2020 might have been a busted flush, David Harvey’s latest conservation project had him bowled over

think it would be fair to say 2020 did not turn out as expected in the world of antiques. I can well recall the miners’ strike in the 1980s and the three-day week of the previous decade, as well as the foot and mouth outbreak, 9/11 and the financial meltdown of 2008. The UK antiques trade survived them all and, in fact, came back more resilient every time. Today, with increasing numbers of collectors fulfilling their ambitions online, the need to establish trust between buyer and seller is even more vital. I believe 2021 will demonstrate how vital even-greater research and depth of knowledge will be.

ROYAL FLUSH How nice, then, to have something of an open and closed case to bring you. Imagine, if you will, what life was like 200 years ago, before hot and cold running water or central heating, and the Regency period’s

36 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

Above The lavatory bowl shows views of Doveridge Hall, Derbyshire Right I couldn’t

resist showing the disassembled parts, in the way of a vintage car buff

Whether this rare Regency, mahogany-cased portable flushing water closet was intended for domestic use or a major general’s campaign is not known, but the legend inside tells us a great deal about what appears at first sight to be just a large mahogany box with a hinged lid. The transfer-printed blue-and-white liner has a cartouche reading: By His Majesty’s Royal Letters Patent Granted to S. Hawkins for an improvement upon WATER CLOSETS & c.&c. No. 167 Fleet Street and is flanked by images of vital WC parts. Interestingly, 167 Fleet Street is now home to a large branch of the ironmongers Robert Dyas – though I doubt health and safety laws would allow them to stock this model.

Lighter shade of pail

The agony of conservation was all worth it when we started to put the loo back together again – knowing that it functioned in the same way it did when it was made in the 1820s.

The final job was placing the bucket and liner back under the hinged seat. Even this part of the WC cleaned up well and, once in place, helped to make the effect complete.

I was asked recently whether things like this actually sell. I can say, every time I have acquired a working flush toilet from the 18th or 19th centuries, I have sold them.

Certainly they are a talking point when an admirer looks at what appears to be a large brown box and asks: “What does that do?”. They are in for quite a surprise. Having the history of Steven Hawkins certainly helps, and when one of his pieces looks like this, it could be game, set and match.

FLUSHED FOR SUCCESS The gravity-flush, hinged flap is similarly decorated, with the whole bowl printed in blue with the view of Doveridge Hall, Derbyshire. The source print for this pattern is from John Preston Neale’s Views of the seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen in England and Wales. The maker, Steven Hawkins, applied for a patent in 1821 for which he received a royal letters patent in 1822. I am always delighted to be able to show just how inventive and brilliant people in the UK were and still are. This example is numbered 1451.

Over the years the WC had become somewhat dilapidated but all the component parts were there and the process of breathing new life into it began in my conservation department. Hawkins was a wise maker who realised his products would need servicing from time to time, so the whole piece is constructed so it can be reasonably easily taken apart.

The flushing water emanates from the pipe in the centre at the back of the bowl, which has a hinged gravity flap for the contents to be washed into the removable bucket under the bowl. Removing the original screws from the perimeter of the case gave access to all the working parts to service them.

Not surprisingly, the copper tank had a few leaks and some friends very kindly re-soldered the joints as necessary. Every part of this WC was taken out, assessed, repaired, restored and replaced. It was as much a labour of love as a conservation project and revealed again just how far-sighted inventors were a couple of centuries ago.

Above left The WC was made by Steven Hawkins who, in 1821, applied for and received a royal letters patent for a water closet

What we might today consider a very mundane piece of equipment was made back then to very high standards using excellent quality materials, and it is a tribute to the makers and suppliers that this has lasted so well for so long. May I wish you a very Happy Christmas and a healthy and prosperous New Year.

W R Harvey & Co (Antiques) Ltd, is based in Witney. Visit www.wrharvey.com for details.

Above The WC sent water through a short pipe into the bowl and the weight of the water forced contents down into the bucket Right The mahogany

case WC would have been used by a member of the upper classes

‘Toilets were not common fixtures in Regency homes. They were very much the exception to the rule, owned by only a very few more forward-thinking, wealthy elite’ ANTIQUE COLLECTING 37

BEHIND THE SCENES Drew Pritchard

EXPERT

PROFILE

Right Dealer Drew Pritchard with the design classic Anglepoise lamp Below Required reading:

old auction cataloues

DREW PRITCHARD

We go behind the scenes with the renowned antiques expert and salvage dealer What makes a design classic?

It has to be something that transcends tastes and styles.

Take the Anglepoise lamp, for example, of which I am particularly fond. It is incredibly simple but very clever at the same time. It might date from the 1920s but still works today. The same could be said of an Eames lounger, or Howard furniture from the early 20th century. They both have a purity of design that shows the designer has thought outside the box.

Can you teach ‘having an eye’?

I sometimes say “my eye is all I’ve got” but it’s enough to keep me being successful. My dad had an incredible eye, as does my brother and son, so maybe it is something that can be inherited. I think you can teach it up to 80 per cent, but that last, all-important 20 per cent is just inherent. I also have friends with incredibly good taste, which helps. I am very picky about what I buy. It has to be the best quality, it has to be original, and be able to stand alone - then there’s the extra 10 per cent. It has to be better, different, the best colour, height, materials, patina. It’s that 10 per cent that keeps me where I am.

How did you start in the business?

As a stained glass restorer in 1986, pulling doors out of architectural antique dealers’ vans and restoring them. I went self-employed years ago and have been ever since.

Over the years I have had some incredible finds, but the one that most excites me is the next one.

Did you have a mentor?

I didn’t. In many ways I wish I had have, but I learned the ropes myself on the job, making dozens of mistakes.

Has lockdown changed buying habits?

Since lockdown there has been an explosion in people buying, it really hasn’t been this good since 1995. People are staying at home and, importantly, making educated choices about what they buy. People are buying really good quality pieces – there’s that old adage that very good pieces are easy to sell and you can’t sell rubbish, and that is true.

What is the future for ‘brown furniture’?

I have never gone off brown furniture. I think what happened is that a lot of very poor quality pieces got

38 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

shipped to America and, before long, all of it got the reputation of being cheap, which impinged on the better stuff which all got labelled ‘brown furniture’. In my opinion, you cannot go wrong with 18th-century and early 19th-century English furniture, which is a superb buy. My house is full of it, my shop is full of it and my website is full of it. It has never been cheaper and you should fill your boots with it.

What advice would you have for the collector hoping to turn dealer?

That’s a tricky one because collectors by their very nature want to keep hold of things. They would have to make that transition to be happy to let things go.

If someone came into their shop and wanted to buy everything they would have to say, “Yes, please, take it all” and be really happy. If they can’t do that, then they can’t be a dealer.

Where are your happy hunting grounds?

I love architectural salvage yards. I went to one the other day in Leamington Spa and it was like going back to the 1980s – it was packed with garden architecture and hidden gems. The other places I really like are antiques centres – the bigger the better. If there are thousands of pieces for sale you know there has to be a couple of treasures that have slipped through the net. Plus, they have tea shops.

Your best reference book?

I find reference books rather limited but I love to collect, read, and reread, auction catalogues dating back 50 years. All the information you ever need is there.

Drew Pritchard’s new show Salvage Hunters: Design Classics is available on Discovery+

‘In my opinion, you cannot go wrong with 18th-century and early 19th-century furniture, which is a superb buy. My house is full of it, my shop is full of it and my website is full of it. It has never been cheaper and you should fill your boots with it’

ADVERTORIAL Government guidance

TIME IS RUNNING OUT. IS YOUR BUSINESS READY? New rules for doing business with the EU start on 1 January 2021.

Businesses – including those in your industry – need to act now.

Business is changing and new rules are coming. The UK has left the EU and will leave the single market and customs union at the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020. There are definite actions that businesses need to take now.

If you run a business, it’s important that you check what you need to do.

You can be confident that preparations for these changes will not be wasted. By taking action now, you can make sure your business is ready from 1 January 2021 to take advantage of new opportunities.

Getting ready can take longer than you think.

You’ll find full guidance on the gov.uk/ transition website, along with a checklist to help you prepare .

But for businesses in the antiques sector, here are some areas where you’re likely to need to take action.

IMPORTING AND EXPORTING PRODUCTS MADE FROM ENDANGERED PLANTS OR ANIMALS From 1 January 2021, new rules will apply to the movement of items made from endangered animal and plant species on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) list. These include items made using: rosewood tortoiseshell reptile skins whale teeth and whalebone (e.g. in vintage garments)

• • • •

• worked ivory including carved and inlaid • shells and coral • feathers • taxidermy

If you’re planning to import, export or re-export such items between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or between Great Britain and the EU, you’ll need the correct permit or certificate, based on what you are moving and where you are moving it from/to.

All UK import and export permits are valid for 6 months and you need to allow at least 30 days to receive your permit, so it’s important to apply as early as possible.

You will also need to consider your trading route and use a designated CITES point of entry or exit.

SELLING GOODS IN THE UK AND EU From 1 January 2021 the essential requirements and standards that can be used to demonstrate compliance will be the same as they are now. However, to continue selling goods in the UK and EU, there are actions you need to take now.

The top 3 are: Checking if Import VAT is due at the border. Your business could face delays, disruption or administrative costs if you do not comply with new customs procedures from 1 January 2021.

Using the gov.uk website to identify changes affecting manufactured goods, such as new marking requirements or approvals needed, to ensure your business is ready to sell them in the UK and EU.

•

•

You may not be able to sell your goods if you do not comply with the relevant goods regulations and standards from 1 January 2021. What you need to do will depend on the area your business operates in (Great Britain or the EU), or if you are moving goods (Northern Ireland).

Getting ready to make customs declarations. Import and export declarations are complicated, requiring specialist skills, knowledge and IT. If you provide the wrong information or are unable to make declarations, your business could face delays, disruptions or administrative costs, so you are advised to appoint a customs declaration specialist.

•

To help UK businesses, the UK Government has put a range of support measures in place, including introducing new border controls in stages up until 1 July 2021 and providing more than £80 million to boost the capacity of the customs intermediary sector. In July it announced a £705 million funding package for border infrastructure, staffing and IT, to ensure border systems are fully operational after the end of the transition period.

Find everything you need to know to prepare for 1 January 2021.

Visit gov.uk/transition

CHECK THE GUIDANCE. MAKE THE CHANGES. AND LET’S GET GOING.

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 39

COLLECTING GUIDES Cocktail rings and watches

W

hile their glamorous history is steeped in the Prohibition speakeasy, cocktail rings leapt back into the recent limelight when Meghan Markle, the newly-titled Duchess of Sussex, wore an aquamarine cocktail ring (previously worn by Princess Diana) at her evening wedding celebrations. But where did this most flamboyant of all accessories originate?

Well, imagine yourself in the 1920s at a cocktail party. You’re wearing an elegant gown and that fabulous ring on your finger is getting a lot of attention. People are left stunned and bedazzled, you are the talk of the party. That is exactly why cocktail and dinner rings were worn, for their style and to attract attention. But the question is, which would you choose for what event, and when did these style of rings arrive?

PROHIBITION ERA

Actress Blake Lively rocks the style at a recent red carpet event, image Shutterstock

Party faithful While get-togethers might be off the agenda, there’s no reason not to dazzle this Christmas with cocktail rings and watches, writes jewellery expert Andrew Campbell 40 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

The original cocktail ring was oversized and had a diamond at the centre, which was often surrounded by smaller diamonds. It all started in 1920s Prohibition America when alcohol was banned and people held parties in secret. The era coincided with a time of change in the status of women who had the freedom to vote and celebrated their new-found power in some outlandish fashions. Women’s freedom was expressed in the flapper fashions of the time, which favoured short hair and short skirts. Women enjoyed smoking and drinking and greater spending power. Not surprisingly, the glamorous art deco jewellery worn in the 1920s reflected this new-found consumerism.

This was the time for women to be seen and heard and cocktail rings became a symbol of rebellion for women.

The era also saw the arrival of the cocktail, designed to hide the taste of the rather awful alcohol that was around at the time.

Illegal alcoholic drinks were sold in establishments called speakeasies. Before the speakeasy, women did not traditionally attend public bars. But during the Roaring Twenties, they both frequented and managed these drinking places. Cocktails sold therein contained imported alcohol and were designed to appeal primarily to women, including the Mary Pickford, the gin Rickey, the Tom Collins, the whiskey sour and the sidecar.

It stands to reason the cocktail glass would be followed by the cocktail ring. A match made in heaven; cocktail parties, fabulous fashion and of course show-

A 7.80ct peridot and 1.36ct diamond, 18ct yellow gold cluster ring, c. 1935, on sale for £4,450

stopping rings. The bigger and brighter the cocktails meant the rings also became bigger and brighter to match. They became a sign of wealth as well as a personality measure.

CHANGING STYLES In the 1920s, the most valuable cocktail rings showcased large diamonds or other precious gemstones such as emeralds and sapphires set in platinum or gold and surrounded by pavé diamonds. More interesting designs used colourful gemstones such as opal, or novel and abstract shapes.

Nowadays, the possibilities for cocktail rings are limited in some ways due to the decreasing availability of large gemstones. But this can be solved by using other gems such as quartz, tourmaline, blue topaz or citrine. These are still available in large sizes. In other ways, possibilities have increased due to innovative techniques that allow for an infinite variety of designs.

For example, precious metals can be shaped into almost any form and then intricately set with micropavé coloured gems. This means that large central gems are no longer necessary, since small, closely set stones can create as dramatic an effect. Cocktail ring designers can also blend coloured gemstones with enamelling techniques to produce various textures. Some of the most remarkable cocktail rings are designed in this way to look like natural objects, such as flowers or animals.

THE NEW ‘DINNER PARTY’ When the Prohibition lifted in the 1930s, a change in ring styles occurred. Cocktail parties were known as dinner parties and hence the arrival of the ‘dinner ring’.

Dinner rings were still large and glamorous although diamonds which were usually centre stage were

Above left A 0.57ct

emerald and 1.20ct diamond, platinum ring, c. 1920, on sale for £5,950 Above A 3.26ct diamond and platinum art deco cocktail ring, c. 1935, on sale for £24,500 Above right Cocktails in an upmarket Paris bar, image Shutterstock Below right A 5.86ct

Ceylon sapphire and 0.73ct art deco diamond, platinum dress ring, c. 1935, on sale for £9,950

History of the cocktail

The origin of the word is open to debate on both sides of the Atlantic. According to the American George Bishop in his 1965 book The Booze Reader: A Soggy Saga of a Man in His Cups the word dates to the mid 1800s and refers to a woman of easy virtue who was considered desirable but impure. The word was imported to America by expatriate Englishmen who used it in a derogatory way to describe the American habit of putting ice in gin– thereby making it desirable put impure.

In The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (1844) Dickens refers to “rum-toddy, mint-julep, ginsling, and cocktail”. Such drinks may have been served in glasses that looked like an egg-cup: “coquetier” in French.

In 1936 The Bartender, attributed the word to English sailors in the 1800s who were served mixed drinks in a Mexican tavern. The concoctions were stirred by the root of a plant which, owing to its shape, was called cola de gallo, which translates into English as “cock’s tail”. moved to second class in the dinner ring. With dinner rings gemstones took centre stage, especially garnets, aquamarines and emeralds around which diamonds were set. This was a time when the parties became less wild but rather more high-class affairs with rings being the ultimate accessory.

These rings hit their height of popularity in the 1940s and ‘50s and, although they went out of fashion in the ‘60s and ‘70s they made a massive come back in the flamboyant ‘80s, which has continued to the present day where they are regularly seen on the red carpet of the Emmys and the Golden Globes.

‘Illegal alcoholic drinks were sold in establishments called speakeasies. Before the speakeasy, women traditionally did not attend public bars. But during the Roaring Twenties, they both frequented and managed these drinking places. Cocktails were designed to appeal primarily to women, including the Mary Pickford, the gin Rickey and the sidecar’ ANTIQUE COLLECTING 41

COLLECTING GUIDES Cocktail rings and watches

COCKTAIL WATCHES Originating just after the turn of the 20th century, ladies’ cocktail watches have seen a rich and glamorous history. From their secretive beginnings in the Prohibition jazz age, up to the 21st century, cocktail watches have held a well-deserved place in jewellery boxes everywhere. As well as being beautifully designed, antique and vintage cocktail watches reveal a great deal about women’s role in high-class society and how it has evolved over the decades.

TIME FOR CHANGE

How to wear your ring

Traditionally cocktail rings were worn on the ring finger or index finger of the right hand. But today you can wear them on any finger you favour, apart from the classic wedding finger.

With regard to colour and size, it’s up to the wearer.

They are statement pieces and are all about being noticed, so the more eye-catching the better. However, the main stone should be three carats or more and, if surrounded by smaller stones, they shouldn’t distract from the main stone.

Above left A 2.92ct diamond cocktail watch in platinum and 9ct white gold, c. 1950, on sale for £4,125 Above A 3.07ct art deco diamond cocktail watch in platinum, French, c. 1935, on sale for £7,645 Above right A 2.24ct diamond ladies’ cocktail watch in platinum, c. 1930, on sale for £3,795 Left Cocktail rings are making a comeback, image Shutterstock Right A 6.20ct Ceylon

sapphire and 3.20ct diamond, 18ct yellow gold cluster ring, on sale for £10,950

42 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

As long as there have been wristwatches, there have been cocktail watches. First created by Tiffany & Co just after the turn of the 20th century, cocktail watches were designed as a subtle and secretive way for women to check the time. In this period, time-checking was deemed unladylike, and casting one’s eyes away to check a wristwatch in the middle of a conversation was considered a serious faux pas for women in civilised society. In short, it wasn’t thought necessary or relevant for women to be concerning themselves with time, schedules, and appointments at all – it was more acceptable for them to be considered exclusively as ladies of leisure. Hence the first incarnations were disguised as bracelets – sleek and elegant and usually crafted in white gold or platinum and ornamented with sparkling diamonds.

The all-important dial within these designs would either be so small it wasn’t immediately noticeable or hidden away behind a diamond-encrusted lid or secret panel. Their purpose – aside from telling the time – was to signify pure grandeur and luxury. Unlike inconspicuous wristwatches, cocktail watches were

left With no social

norms to follow, women were frequent visitors to speakeasies, image Shutterstock

Right A 1930s

illustration for a cocktail dress by the French haute couture fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin

Below left A 2.80ct emerald and 2.75ct diamond, 18ct yellow gold dress ring, on sale for £10,950 Below A 3.32ct amethyst

and 0.80ct diamond, 14ct and 9ct yellow gold dress ring, c. 1930, on sale for £2,250

Below right A 2.28ct

diamond and 0.52ct ruby, 18ct yellow gold dress ring, c. 1940, on sale for £8,950

designed to be status symbols and talking points at parties – hence the lavishness and ornateness of antique and vintage watches. Other than the braceletstyle strap, the anatomy of a cocktail watch closely resembles that of any classic wristwatch. The obvious difference in many cocktail watches is the subtle lid or secret panel which serves to hide the face.

After WWII, cocktail watches and wristwatches both became more readily available as the world of luxury watches moved away from conservativism and became more accessible to the mass market. It was during this time that cocktail watch designs started to vary more, with bright gemstones becoming much more of a common feature.

Andrew Campbell owns Newcastle-based antique silverware and jewellery retailer AC Silver, which stocks many examples of cocktail rings and watches, including those mentioned in this article.

For more details go to to www.acsilver.co.uk

DRESS TO IMPRESS In the 1920s, fashions changed to clothe the new breed of emancipated women who were seen at private cocktail soirées and lounges.

The cocktail dress, which started as a short evening sheath with matching hat, shoes, and gloves, was launched. As the decade continued, cocktail garb became the uniform for the progressive, fashionable elite.

In 1926, Vogue published a drawing of a simple black dress in crêpe de Chine. It had long, narrow sleeves and was accessorised with a string of pearls.

Like the car, the publication dubbed it “Chanel’s Ford”, in other words it was simple and accessible to women of all classes.

Beading remained all the rage for the entire decade. At first, they were placed in small clusters to accent the hip, bust, shoulder, or hem. But soon allover glass beading on net created the fabric, on which to stitch elaborate art deco designs. Designers including Callot Soeurs loved using metal sequins (also called spangles) on their designs. When gold sequin-like disks were discovered on clothing in King Tut’s Tomb in 1922, the sequin industry boomed.

During WWII, the hemline of the cocktail dress rose from the 1930s ankle, to mid-calf “cocktail-length”. The look was completed when Parisian milliners started to produce elegant chapeaus with black silk net veils for the cocktail hour.

But it was Christian Dior who first named the early evening frock a “cocktail” dress in the late 1940s, allowing it to be copied by rival designers and department stores across the globe, at the same time taking the look from the salon to the mass market.

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 43

MEMORABILIA 2020’s strangest auction lots

Cool & Collectable

In a very odd year we’ve witnessed some highly unusual items go under the hammer, Paul Fraser reveals some favourites

BLIND AS A BEATLE

So we’ll deal with the big question first. Whose spectacles are worth more? John Lennon’s or Mahatma Gandhi’s? John Lennon was terribly short sighted.

But wearing glasses didn’t fit with the band’s carefully designed image. That changed after Lennon appeared in the 1967 film How I Won the War, whose character wore round rimmed, “Gandhi-style” glasses. Lennon took the look into his public life. In fact, they became such a part of his style that the 1970s Let It Be album cover prominently featured a bespectacled Lennon.

Top right The glasses sold for £260,000, image East Bristol Auctions Above right Mahatma Gandhi in 1935, image Wikicommons seller, image Paul Fraser Collectibles Top John Lennon in 1969, image Wikicommons Right Hansons’ Emma Carberry with the royal outfit and boots, image Hansons Below left A pair of Lennon’s glasses sold for £44,000, image Sotheby’s

44 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

A pair of Lennon’s glasses sold for £44,000 at an auction of Beatles memorabilia at Sotheby’s in October.

The glasses were originally owned

by Dorothy Jarlett, Lennon’s housekeeper to whom Lennon gifted numerous items of memorabilia.

Yet £44,000 was a small sum compared to the £260,000 achieved by East Bristol Auctions for a pair of Gandhi’s glasses in August. Gandhi had gifted the glasses to a BP employee in South Africa in the 1920s or 1930s.

“We found them just four weeks ago in our letterbox, left there by a gentleman whose uncle had been given them by Gandhi himself,” the auction house posted on Instagram.

MOURNING GLORY

When Prince Albert died suddenly from typhoid fever in 1861, Queen Victoria was consumed by grief from which she never recovered. She retreated from public duty and mourned the loss continually, wearing black every day for the last 40 years of her life.

A collection of Victoria’s black mourning clothes sold for more than £17,000 at Hanson’s Auctioneers in January, having secretly passed down through four generations of the same family. The items, which included two pairs of leather boots, a black taffeta skirt, two bodices and a large pair of bloomers, had originally belonged to the Queen’s royal photographer Alexander Lamont Henderson.

The buyer was the Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that looks after several royal residencies including Kensington Palace. So we should be able to see them on display soon.

THE NINTENDO PLAYSTATION?

Now I’m no gamer, but I know a weird collectable when I see one.

A unique Nintendo PlayStation video game console, once thought to be a myth, sold for $360,000 at Heritage Auctions in March. The console is believed to be the only surviving prototype from a failed collaboration between Nintendo and Sony.

When Nintendo developed their SNES console in the early 1990s they struck a deal with Sony to supply CD drives to their machines, creating a new console which would play games from both cartridges and discs. This hybrid machine was named the Nintendo PlayStation and 200 prototypes were built circa 1992, but Nintendo pulled out of the deal and the console was scrapped.

STAN THE DINOSAUR

A T-rex skeleton named Stan sold for almost $32m at Christie’s in October – setting a new record for a dinosaur skeleton.

Unusually, the skeleton was offered by Christie’s as part of a modern art sale, rather than an auction of natural history specimens.

The move paid off, and Stan achieved the third-highest price of the auction, outselling works by the likes of Pablo Picasso and Paul Cézanne. An amateur palaeontologist found the 40-foot long skeleton in 1987, in the fossil-rich area spanning North and South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana. Stan smashed the previous 1997 record of $8.4m for another T-rex skeleton nicknamed Sue.

Above The Nintendo PlayStation console was thought to be apocryphal, image Heritage Auctions Above right Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) a triple portrait of Charles I, sporting his trademark beard Right Prince Philip’s ice skates sold for £275 in 2020, image Paul Fraser Collectibles Below right A pair of original Sooty puppets was another 2020 hit, image Paul Fraser Collectibles Above Charles I beard hair has been a top seller in 2020, image Paul Fraser Collectibles

Left The skeleton sold for close to $32m, image Christie’s

PRINCE PHILIP’S ICE SKATES Right The dinosaur’s ferocious teeth, image Christie’s

‘A T-rex skeleton named Stan sold for almost $32m at Christie’s in October – setting a new record for a dinosaur skeleton’

Here at Paul Fraser Collectibles we do our own line of unusual auction lots and stock items. In the past 12 months we’ve auctioned a pair of original Sooty puppets, a blood splattered portrait of supermodel Kate Moss by her then-boyfriend, musician Pete Doherty, and not forgetting Prince Philip’s ice skates from the early 1950s. And I haven’t even mentioned our world-leading historical hair collection. Charles I’s beard hair has been our biggest seller in 2020.

Paul Fraser is the founder of Paul Fraser Collectibles, for more details go to www. paulfrasercollectibles.com ANTIQUE COLLECTING 45

COLLECTING GUIDES Game maps

Puzzling Times

Ever wondered what the Georgians played at Christmas? Puzzle maps were designed to educate and entertain, and were even mentioned in works by Jane Austen, writes May Geolot

W

hile Monopoly and Scrabble might dominate family games agendas this festive season, 300 years ago the outlook was rather different.

The emerging children’s culture of the mid-18th century produced toys and games that were often as ornamental as they were practical. The demand for increasingly unique and interesting items eventually resulted in geographic board games and puzzles.

In them, players travelled to Egypt’s “famous pyramids”, then on to Naples “to view its antiquities, and Mount Vesuvius”, while avoiding the grizzly bear,

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 4618 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

Below Wallis’s Tour of

Europe: players got another go for landing on a European capital

described as “the largest and fiercest animal on this continent. His very name is dreadful, as his disposition is bloodthirsty”.

Geography was an important academic subject for students in Georgian England, and these educational board games and puzzles incorporating maps served as perfect study aids. The growing interest in travel abroad with the Grand Tour and trips further afield also spurred demand for these geographical pastimes.

The popularity of these games even merited a mention in Jane Austen’s 1814 novel Mansfield Park, when the poor protagonist is mocked by her wealthy cousins because she “cannot put the map of Europe together”.

BOARDING SCHOOL One of the first publishers of these game maps was John Wallis (1745?-1818), a British map and book maker, seller and publisher. After his first business, Wallis & Stonehouse, went bankrupt in 1778, he became well-known for producing games and puzzles for children.

This geographical game map from 1794 recreates the contemporary tradition of the Grand Tour, where wealthy young men were sent around Europe to acquire culture and experience different countries.

It is suitable for two to three players but up to six can play “if a double set of counters and pyramids

Global view

are purchased.” Each player takes a pyramid and four counters, which are meant to represent the tourist and their servants. The game rules and a numbered list of places are in the margins, with a fact about each city named. The players start at Harwich (No. 1), then spin a totem to see how many cities they can advance. Each subsequent roll is added to the total, so the last city (London) must be landed on with an exact roll to win the game. If for various reasons they miss a turn, they leave a counter (or servant) at the city, and have to retrieve them before they can advance.

From 1813, John Wallis worked in collaboration with his son Edward Wallis (1787?-1868), who continued the business after his father’s death in 1818.

The younger Wallis’s New Game, ‘Exhibiting a Voyage round The World of 1823’, contains the world in two conjoined hemispheres with five additional hemispheres around the outside. The players circumnavigate the world traveling east around Africa, through India, “New Holland”, then north to China and Japan, then south through North and South America, west to New Zealand the Pacific Islands before crossing back to the South Atlantic and returning to London.

Top right Alphonse Giroux (1776-1848), puzzle globe which can be dissected into eight sections Right Each section

revealed details about various countries

Above Wallis’s ‘New Game, Exhibiting a Voyage round The World’, dating from 1823 Below right Thomas

Jefferys’ (1719-1771) ‘Complete Tour Round the World’, 1771

MAPMAKER TO THE KING

There are rare examples of globes that transform into puzzles. This dissected globe is cut into eight crosssections, which show continental maps on the upper side and illustrated information on the reverse. Each crosssection divides into four or six pieces, which can be assembled divided up in four or six sectors, together forming the globe. It is the work of Alphonse Giroux (1776-1848), who trained as an artist under JacquesLouis David, and later established a shop in Paris for paints and varnishes. The design is very similar to an English puzzle globe produced

by Abraham Nathan Myers in 1866, but the cartography is less detailed.

In this game map Jefferys offers a ‘Complete Tour Round the World’. The player begins in the Azores, and heads down the west coast of Africa, passing St Helena, and the Cape of Good Hope “discovered first by the Portuguese”. From there the player heads up the east coast and into the Red Sea to the port of Mocho, which “is famous for the best coffee in the world”, and Mecca where “Mahomet commanded all his sect to make a pilgrimage to this place once in their lives”. The player leaves the Arabian Peninsula, journeying through Iran and into India, where one must stay two turns in Calcutta the capital of Bengal, “to see one of the richest countries in the world”.

From there they head north through Central Asia and on to China, and Peking “capital and residence of the Emperor of China, from whence the finest tea in the universe is brought in the caravans to Russia”.

From thence to Tibet, which is not only the residence of the “Dali-Lama” (sic), but also the has the “best rhubarb”. The player arrives in the New World through

Another well-known publisher of these cartographic games was Thomas Jefferys (1719-1771). As Geographer in Ordinary to the King, Jefferys was a highly-regarded cartographer and publisher, who is known both for his game maps and the first known case involving maps and copyright infringement related to his game map of Europe, which he said was illegally copied by rival Carington Bowles – emphasizing the popularity and profit driving production of these educational games.

‘Each player takes a pyramid and four counters, which are meant to represent the tourist and their servants. The game rules and a numbered list of places are in the margins, with a fact about each city named’ ANTIQUE COLLECTING 47

COLLECTING GUIDES Game maps the North West Passage, and then down the south coast to California where “the inhabitants have no houses, dwell in arbours in the summer, and creep into caves in the winter”, to Central and South America and up the east coast to New York, and Newfoundland, where the traveller must stay a turn to sample the “chauder” – a dish of cod boiled with fat salt pork – and a cup of “black strap” spruce beer and rum sweetened with treacle. The game ends with the sight of Lands End “the first pleasant place in England which is seen by mariners in their return from long voyages.”

AMERICAN VIEW Some game maps offered the British a chance to see what life was like across the Atlantic. Edward Wallis’s ‘Game of the Star-Spangled Banner’ is a rare and entertaining map of the United States.

This scarce and beautiful instructional game was to be played as a lotto, with each player moving around the finely detailed map crowded with vignettes of American life and wildlife. The authority on game maps and author of Table Games of Georgian and Victorian Days, Francis Reginald Beaman Whitehouse, wrote: “It is probably the earliest game to utilise a map of the United States.”

The game sought to teach an English audience about the United States with its accompanying rule book. It included a number of references to slavery, such as, “The slave-holders of the southern states are extensively supplied from the markets of Virginia, where negroes are reared for the purpose of sale and traffic... the last taint of negro blood subjects an individual to this degraded condition.” Some of the descriptions of American wildlife, too, must have been alarming, such as that of the Turkey Buzzard, “this bird feeds on carrion, and if attempted to be taken, vomits the contents of its stomach in the face of its pursuer, emitting the most intolerable stench”; and the Grizzly Bear, aforementioned in the introduction.

48 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

MAIDSTONE TO LONDON Above right Walker’s 118-stop map acted as a learning tool as well as game

Below left Edward Wallis’s ‘Game of the Star-Spangled Banner’ provided players with an insight into America Below right Madame

Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (17111780) was an early puzzle maker

Some game maps stuck to territory closer to home.

John Walker was a physician, geographer and engraver who designed this game map through England and Wales. The Holborn Hill publishers, William and Thomas Darton, prominent in the field of children’s educational games and puzzles, published the map in 1809.

The game map allows players, or travellers, to traverse England and Wales, starting in Maidstone in Kent and finishing in London, the 118th stop on the board. Each place highlighted on this colourful map is accompanied by a description in the letterpress, with facts and trivia drawn from contemporary traveller’s guides and gazetteers. These games would have helped children familiarise themselves with towns and sights across the country and their notable features.

For example, in Manchester, travellers are invited to stop to “see the manufactories, the handsome streets and elegant houses” and Liverpool is praised as “a town that fills all with astonishment: the industry of the inhabitants, its dock-yards, the exchange, the shipping, and the magnificence of its public and private buildings, demonstrate its importance to the British Empire”. The latter reflects the significance placed on Great Britain’s rapidly expanding empire.

FAIR GAMERS

Collecting game maps

Like their board game counterparts, “dissected maps” became popular in both England and across Europe as they offered a perfect pastime for students and teachers alike: a lesson in geography, a light-hearted game and a work of art. Although the British cartographer John Spilsbury (1739-1769) is widely credited with creating the first dissected map in 1766, we can thank two women for inventing these clever map puzzles: Madame Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1711-1780) and Lady Charlotte Finch (1725-1813), royal governess to George III’s children.

In fact, Lady Finch kept a whole cabinet filled with jigsaw maps for her royal pupils, now at the Victoria & Albert’s Museum of Childhood.

De Beaumont, whose third husband was the French spy Thomas Pichon (1757–1760), also wrote several fairy tales, among them an abridged version of Beauty and the Beast.

Although game maps were widely popular from the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century, they have become increasingly rare. Unlike most maps, these game maps were intended to be used – and played – and therefore finding ones in good condition can be difficult. For example, we have only been able to trace two institutional examples of the Jefferys world game map: a first state housed at the British Library and an example of the second state at Colonial Williamsburg.

Similarly, we have been able to trace only two institutional examples of the set of Dopter’s geographical puzzles, at the State Library of New South Wales and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Many of these game maps are sold today without their original totems and sometimes without accompanying booklet with directions, however this should not serve as a major deterrent as the maps themselves are rich with so much fascinating detail.

EXPENSIVE GIFT One particularly fine example of a set of geographical jigsaws was presented in a decorative wooden case, to two girls, Yvon and Henriette Pasquet, in 1903 by Countess de Turgot.

The publisher, Jean Vincent Marie Dopter (18071859), was renowned for his puzzle maps, which earned him medals and honourable mentions at various exhibitions, including l’Exposition universelle de Paris, and the Great Exhibition in London. The dissected maps show named countries, exploration routes and

On display A The geographical

jigsaw was a gift from the Countess de Turgot

B A map of Africa is one of seven included C The maps were housed in special case

B

A

C

the relief of major mountain ranges, making the puzzles an effective educational aid, and a literalisation of Lefebvre’s claim that “knowledge of spaces wavers between description and dissection.”

FOUR CONTINENTS The wooden box contains seven jigsaws, displaying one world map, a map of France divided into departments, and maps of the continents of Europe, North America, South America and Asia.

Game maps can be framed and hung on a wall or stored in the original manner in which they were sold: the hand coloured maps were dissected, re-laid on linen, and folded into a slip-case with an engraved label advertising its contents.

Keep an eye out for these maps with both dealers and specialist auction houses so you can start your own geographic adventure. Collectors of game maps appreciate them for their ingenuity, reflection of cultural history, and visual appeal and the joy of imagining them being played 200 years ago.

The engraved maps were printed, hand-coloured, glued onto card, and then dissected into 70 to 80 pieces. They are separated by boards bordered with the same green paper that lines the inside of the box. They all identify Dopter’s address as 58 rue de la Harpe, apart from the map of Europe, which lists number 66 as its place of publication.

As is the inevitable fate of almost all toys, a few parts have been lost, leaving two holes in the maps of North America and France. Other examples of Dopter’s Atlas set also contain a puzzle depicting Oceania, which is not included here.

Such ornate sets were predictably expensive, and became popular mainly with the elite, among whom these items were made into symbols of status. This set of games, then, would have been an extravagant present, worthy of the Countess de Turgot who gifted them.

May Geolot is a specialist at London-based Daniel Crouch Rare Books, a dedicated dealer in rare maps, atlases, plans, sea charts and voyages dating from the 15th to the 19th centuries. For more details go to www.crouchrarebooks.com ANTIQUE COLLECTING 49

ANTIQUES UNDER THE HAMMER Upcoming lots

TOP of the LOTS

We preview everything from a newlydiscovered Constable to watches owned by three legendary Hollywood actors A Regency drum library table has an estimate of £1,000-£1,500 at Bishop & Miller’s sale on December 16.

The elegant pedestal table, on offer at the Suffolk auctioneer’s fine art auction, is made in mahogany typical of the period.

A previously unrecorded oil sketch by John Constable (1776-1837) of Dedham Vale, has an estimate of £100,000-£150,000 at Sworders’ sale on December 8-9.

The 26.5 x 43.5cm (10½ x 17¼in) painting, c.1809-1810, which includes a windmill owned by the artist’s father, had hung in a London town house for many years.

While dismissed as a copy, Sworders’ picture specialist Sarah Flynn took it to Anne Lyles, a world-renowned authority on the Suffolk artist, who decribed it as “an exciting new discovery.”

Constable’s signature brushwork is apparent in distant buildings which are depicted by simple flecks of white paint.

Above The oil sketch has been confirmed as the work of John Constable

Above The table has all the hallmarks of the Regency period

A rare WWII cryptology silk square printed with a list of French codes has an estimate of £400-£600 at Tennants’ militaria sale on December 16.

It once belonged to Joyce Mary Pimblott, a cypher officer for the Special Operations Executive, who handled communications with the French Resistance and played a key role in communications during the D-Day landing.

Light-weight silk was a durable medium for printing codes and, unlike paper, didn’t disintegrate. It could also be sewn into the lining of clothes without detection.

Above Silk squares were durable and difficult to detect in clothes

50 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

A first edition of Frank Baum (1856-1919) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has a low estimate of $20,000 at the Heritage Auction’s sale on December 16.

It is one of the children’s books from the collection of Justin Schiller, owner of America’s oldest continuously operating antiquarian book firm devoted to children’s literature.

The sale, prompted by the closure of the New York store, includes work by Beatrix Potter, Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak.

Above The book comes from the extensive collection of Justin Schiller

A lithographic poster promoting the Swiss ski resort of Toggenburg by Hans Looser (1897-1984) has an estimate of £800-£1,200 at Lyon and Turnbull’s dedicated ski poster sale on January 16.

A graduate of Zürich’s Kunstgewerbeschule, Looser opened an advertising agency in 1953, specialising in fashion illustration.

Above The advertising poster is dated 1952

WATCHES BELONGING TO THREE HOLLYWOOD LEGENDS GO UNDER THE HAMMER IN NEW YORK THIS MONTH Expected to make more than $1m, Paul Newman’s ‘Big Red’ Daytona, reference 6263, given to him by his wife Joanne Woodward on their 25th-wedding anniversary, is one of the highlights of the 138-lot sale at Phillips on December 12.

The wristwatch, inscribed on the back Drive slowly, Joanne, is the one Newman was most often photographed wearing – until he gave it to his daughter, Clea, who consigned it for the sale. Phillips’ head of watches, Paul Boutros, said: “Paul Newman was photographed wearing a handful of Rolex cosmograph Daytona watches and it is this association that has led to the Rolex Daytona being universally regarded as possibly the world’s most sought after wristwatch.”

In 2017, Paul Newman’s Rolex ‘Paul Newman’ Daytona, reference 6239, set a record for the highest sum ever achieved for any vintage wristwatch at auction when it sold for $17¾m.

Right A similar

Heuer Monaco sold for $800,000 in 2012

Right The watch

Right Paul

goes under the hammer on December 12

Newman wearing the Rolex “Big Red” Daytona

Right The

watch is engraved with a safety plea from Newman’s wife, Joanne

MINUTE-HAND LUKE

Right Steve

McQueen, photo by Bernard Cahier, Getty Images

The Heuer Monaco worn by Steve McQueen in the 1971 film Le Mans is another highlight from the same sale.

The watch was a gift from the awardwinning actor to his mechanic Haig Alltounian at the end of filming and features the engraving To Haig Le Mans 1970 .

McQueen wore the watch on set while driving a Porsche 917 at speeds above 200 mph.

Designed by Jack Heuer, the Monaco reference 1133 was one of the world’s first self-winding chronograph wristwatches and named after the famous Formula One racetrack.

In the 2015 documentary Steve McQueen: The Man and Le Mans , Haig recalled McQueen giving him the timepiece saying: “Thank you for keeping me alive all these months.”

Right The watch

was dedicated to McQueen’s head mechanic

Four timepieces from Sylvester Stallone’s collection, including one of the most complicated watches ever made – inspired by the iconic hardman John Rambo – are also in the sale.

The RM025- 01, which has an estimate of $¼-$½m, was inspired by a conversation between Stallone and Mille on the watch the action hero Rambo was lost likely to wear. The result was a timepiece with a dizzying array of technical features, including a survival aid with a tiny compartment above the crown to hold emergency water purification tablets. Also on sale is the Panerai Luminor worn by Stallone in the 1993 film Daylight and another worn in the film The Expendables 3. Mr Boutros, continued: “In addition to his talents as an actor, Stallone is also a long-time watch collector with a particular eye for the work of Richard Mille.”

Left As well as a well-known actor, Sylvester Stallone is an avid watch collector Left The RM02501, in theory the watch John Rambo may have favoured Right The Luminor Panerai 5218-201 was worn by Stallone on the film Daylight when, according to its owner, it “went through hell in every scene”

The sale Racing Pulse takes place in New York on December 12, for more details or to bid online go to www.phillips.com/watches ANTIQUE COLLECTING 51

April pp.53-63:Layout 1

17/3/17

14:08

Page 63

ANTIQUES CENTRES Jewellery, Watches & Coins: 9 December Silver & Fine Art: 10 December TLC Deck of Cards Charity sale: 11 December Antiques, Clocks & Furniture: 11 December Fine Wines & Spirits: 17 December Decorative Arts: 28 January Contemporary Art: 28 January

ADVERTISE TODAY PLEASE CALL GEORGINA WROE on 01394 389952

Hardback 240 Pages 260 × 220 mm 250+ colour images

or email:

ISBN: 9781848224537

Georgina.Wroe@accartbooks.com

Publication: December 1 2020 £40

YOUNG POLAND THE POLISH ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT, 1890-1918

Edited by Julia Griffin and Andrzej Szczerski Young Poland: The Polish Arts and Crafts Movement, 1890 – 1918 is the first book in any language to explore the Young Poland (Młoda Polska) period in the context of the international Arts and Crafts movements.

Order at www.lundhumphries.com Published in association with

52 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

Rutland The

ARMS

WILLIAM MORRIS GALLERY

ANTIQUES

EXPERT COMMENT Dining room furniture LENNOX CATO

Without RESERVE Small gatherings or not, Christmas is a good time to think about furniture for the dining room, writes Lennox Cato Left A George III

mahogany sideboard, with six, square, tapering legs. The top is in one piece with a crossbanded edge Below Slight wear and

tear on the original lead lined interior is acceptable

O

ver the last 10 to 20 years the dining room has become either a room barely used, or completely redundant. While it might be out of style, this is a great time to buy dining room furniture, which is great to look at and provides valuable storage.

In the late 18th and early 19th century, furniture was developed for specific use. Previously, furniture was placed against the wall when not in use, and sometimes served multiple functions. Some of this new type of furniture, such as sideboards and serving tables, were made specifically for the dining room. The newly-invented sideboard was often rectangular in shape with a bowed or serpentine front. They usually had two compartments: one for holding bottles of wine, the other for drinking glasses. This was then separated by a central drawer or drawers housing table linen or large serving items.

Sideboards are generally made of mahogany, often with ebony and boxwood stringing. As they progressed into the 19th century, brass was introduced as decoration. From this the sideboard evolved and

developed into the side cabinet, and the commode cabinet evolved into the chiffonier.

With this came the use of more exotic timbers such as rosewood. The new side cabinet or chiffonier often had doors with brass grilles backed with fine pleated silk. Like the sideboard, they too were used in the dining room to accommodate glasses, linen and table ware.

Good sideboards often had a brass rail at the back, the fancier the rail the more important the sideboard, some even having two and three-light candelabra on the backs – which nowadays are usually missing. The rail held a curtain to prevent food splashing onto the expensive wall decoration.

KNOW THE RULES When buying 18th-century sideboards bear in mind there are four main designs of varying quality.

Serpentine-fronted are the best ones, then bow-fronted, then break-fronted and lastly, rectangular form. As a general rule, the better ones will have six, square, tapering legs – four in the front and two at the back.

Sideboards with turned legs are usually less expensive and aesthetically look clumsier.

The top of a mahogany sideboard should be made from one piece of veneer – two pieces suggests a replaced top which should be avoided as should a cracked top. Another sign of quality is cross banding on the top, the more exotic the timber used (satinwood, tulipwood, and amaranth (purpleheart)) the better.

Replaced handles are acceptable. If the brass rails have been removed, you will find shadows showing where they originally were, which is also quite acceptable.

What is not acceptable, however, is if it has been re-inlaid, or has replaced or reshaped legs. Larger sideboards often have a little cupboard at the back to accommodate a potty or bourdalou This does not add or detract value from the piece. The cellarette drawer which is usually on the right-hand side is lead lined. As these have been used over years you should accept wear and tear. These can always be restored if needed and again do not detract from the value.

Lennox Cato is a specialist on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow and owns Lennox Cato Antiques, for more details go to www.lennoxcato.com

Left Replaced lion masked handles are totally acceptable Right The clean lines and storage potential of this rectangular side cabinet make it more in keeping with a modern home

‘While changing tastes have dictated sideboards have rather fallen out of fashion, it does mean now is a great time to buy if you have the space to accommodate one’ ANTIQUE COLLECTING 53

EXPERT PREDICTIONS

FUTURE PERFECT

The last 12 months have thrown up huge challenges for the antiques and art industry, but the UK’s leading dealers and auctioneers are optimistic for 2021 Thomas Jenner-Fust

director, auctioneer and valuer, Chorley’s in Gloucestershire 2020 is a year many may wish to forget but it has not been all doom and gloom for the auction business. The latter half of the year has seen like-for-like auction prices higher than they were pre-Covid, which gives good reason to be optimistic about 2021. We must adapt to the changing ways in which people wish to buy at auction and I foresee more online-only sales. Trends are likely to continue on the existing trajectory, with the best items commanding top prices and the ‘middle market’ offering huge value for buyers. With negative interest rates on the horizon we have clients looking to invest money in objects, generally high-value paintings, which they can enjoy in their home, or smaller items that can be easily stored, such as jewellery and objets de vertu.

54 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

Natasha Francis

antique and vintage dealer and buyer on BBC One’s programme Make Me A Dealer There are changes in the way consumers are shopping in lockdown and I believe the patterns will follow into 2021.

We have seen a rise in shopping for antiques and quality vintage ware due to the sustainable living and ‘shop small’ messages communicated throughout social media.

I have also witnessed an increase in kitchen, dining and storage items that are functional as well as beautiful. Pieces such as silver utensils; large, silver-topped vanity jars; and large silver containers for kitchen storage. With the resulting boost to silver, unusual antique pieces have seen an upturn, a trend which will no doubt climb throughout 2021.

From a decorative view, the lockdown has created a huge increase in home offices, resulting in a boom in home workers buying not just desks and chairs but small decorative ornaments – spurred on by the social media hashtags #shelfie and #flalays.

But one of the things I’m most excited about is the hope that the extra time people are spending at home will result in attic and garage clear outs.

I rub my hands in anticipation waiting for their forgotten and unwanted antiques to hit the markets and auction houses.

‘We are even selling and being asked for corner cupboards, large and small, the one item everyone said was dead in the water’ Nigel Kirk

director of Nottinghamshire auctioneers Mellors & Kirk The almost universal adoption of online auctions this year has accelerated industry change by three to five years. By the end of 2021 buying or selling at auction at most UK salerooms will be significantly easier but, hopefully, no less exciting.

The high prices currently being achieved means that anyone faced with bequeathing objects to heirs who might not want them should consider consigning them for sale at auction. All categories saw prices surge during the pandemic, which looks set to continue.

If you are buying with a mind to investment, avoid currently hot areas, such as Chinese and contemporary art in favour of the unfashionable, including 18th-century furniture, British portraiture and Victorian art. Avoid ‘bargains’ as they are usually anything but.

Above all, be discriminating, because to adapt the estate agents’ favourite cliché, it is “condition, condition, condition” that is really important when buying.

‘2021 is the 30th anniversary of the world wide web, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR – all events prompting nostalgia’ Holly Johnson

of Holly Johnson Antiques in Cheshire When buying antiques, people are motivated by good design and the desire to invest in sustainable, longlasting pieces of furniture. We’ve seen and increase in demand for traditional, well-made furniture in warm veneers, such as walnut, which adds richness and character to people’s homes. There’s been an upturn in interest in later arts and crafts furniture by the likes of Edward Barnsley, Gordon Russell, Peter Waals, and Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson.

Times have been tough in 2020 and every sector has taken a hit as a result. The calendar of antique and art fairs has been severely disrupted by the outbreak. However, many people have been investing in their homes, so we have high hopes that 2021 is going to be another busy year.

Will Farmer

director of Fieldings Auctioneers and BBCAntiques Roadshow specialist in 20th-century design I think there has been a steady shift and move from minimalism and mid century into a more ‘80s style. There is a definite surge in interior design with a return to opulent 1980s styling, with lots of objects with surface pattern, good colour, glass and gold, along with an ‘80s colour palette with opulent gilt and pastels.

Looking ahead, I would concentrate on the second half of the 20th century, post-1950s, contemporary, and later 20th-century pieces by known artists and designers yet to be acknowledged in the wider market.

This year has seen the industry re-adjust and buyers, through their greater willingness to bid online, have adjusted with us. However, as auctioneers, we have to continue to build consumer confidence in a virtual world, with clients wanting to hold and inspect items before they purchase them.

Charles Hanson

TV favourite and the managing director, valuer and auctioneer, Hansons Auctioneers in Derbyshire Home is where the heart is and that was underlined in 2020. Lockdown meant people spent enforced time at home and had weeks, if not months, to feather their all-important nests. The desire to dress the home for best and invest in quality objects from the past to aid our comfort and joy will continue in 2021. Areas of growth will include retro 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s furniture, particularly teak.

I’m optimistic for 2021 for many reasons. Not only have auctions flourished in the global pandemic, thanks to online-only sales, the nation’s passion for antiques has been reinvigorated by the focus on our homes and the comfort nostalgic objects bring us.

Good investments include striking, iconic jewellery and designer watches from the 20th century, together with modern furniture. As for the challenges ahead, compared to what we have all faced in 2020, I have no concerns. Things can only get better.

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 55

EXPERT PREDICTIONS

Peter Greenway

director and head of professional services at the London-based auctioneers Roseberys We have seen more interest in our clients buying art and antiques to decorate their homes and gardens – a trend I predict will grow next year.

Silver has seen a monumental growth this year and continues to increase, as investors and traders have been buying the white metal with a frenzy.

There are several factors that have boosted popularity in the bullion market, but a large driving force is the resurgence of generalist investor interest in the sector. Look out for specialist silver sales in 2021 to feed the appetite of these silver buyers.

Louise Phillips

Recently-appointed chairman of the British Antique Dealers’ Assocation (BADA) and dealer at Elaine Phillips Antiques In the first lockdown we saw a marked increase in online sales and enquiries on our website www.bada. org, which represents a number of UK dealers. An encouraging fact was that the buyers were of a younger age group.

Working from home has led to an increased demand for dining tables, and sets of chairs and benches. And for home offices, antique lamps and lighting, bookcases and tables big enough to accommodate laptops and computers. People were also looking for books – for an attractive Zoom backdrop maybe?

This, combined with antiques being seen more and more as the ultimate in recycling, is creating a marked increase in prices for traditional furniture. We are even seeing a growing demand for corner cupboards, large and small – the one piece everyone said was dead.

I predict in 2021 people will become even more aware of the need to support small businesses and appreciate customer service, ideally face to face. As a second-generation dealer in a family business this is something we are passionate about – as well as building relationships and hopefully, collections for clients.

The problems I foresee in 2021 are sourcing enough quality stock (and keeping the wine bottles below the limit of the recycling box).

56 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

Andrew Ewbank

partner, auctioneer and valuer at Ewbank’s Auctions in Surrey We celebrated 30 years in business in 2020. Online auctions broke through the last line of resistance, making buying at auction normal for all people. Expect to see growing demand, and prices, for collectables associated with young buyers, like limitededition clothing and trainers (a multi-billion-dollar market in the US).

In 2019, we posted more than £1.25m in entertainment and sporting memorabilia sales – five times our 2017 total. By September 2020, we had passed that figure; this sector of the market is just getting bigger.

2021 is the 30th-anniversary of the world wide web, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR – all events prompting nostalgia.

Harriet Chavasse

of Thakenham Furniture in Petworth, West Sussex In 2021 sustainability will see continued rising demand for vintage and antique pieces. Customers are also buying pieces unseen, or using our at home approval service. I expect this to endure, and we’ll need to adapt, be it via photos, videos, or, who knows, maybe even virtual reality.

2021 will see a continuation of the eclectic, English country-house look. I expect an emphasis on untouched, well-patinated pieces, that haven’t been heavily restored: understated Georgian pieces with clean lines and country pieces with a rich patina.

Early walnut is increasingly popular, particularly from the Queen Anne period. But the emphasis is very much on colour here, look for golden tallboys, chest of drawers and bureaux on bun feet.

John Black

director and head of design at Sworders in Essex The disdain for mid-century furniture used to be so great among members of the antiques industry, I remember hearing stories from older colleagues of teak and even rosewood furniture from the ‘50s and ‘60s being sent to landfill.

Now, though, the tables have turned and a mid-century rosewood chest can make four times that of a Georgian chest. It’s not just millennials who are interested – we have all age ranges wanting ‘a fresh space to live and work’.

The way we now live has changed markedly from 30 years ago. I wonder what the next 30 years see?

With Brexit done we all thought 2020 was going to be a great year, but the pandemic appeared like a black cloud to surround us.

We knew we had to change and went from viewed sales to online sales in the space of a month. Timed sales became an integral part of our calendar and we have learned to embrace new technologies while still offering a great customer service to all our clients.

‘2021 will see a continuation of the eclectic, English countryhouse look’ Aubrey Dawson

managing director, Dawsons Auctioneers London and Berkshire 2020 has been an unforgettable year and the catalyst for muchneeded change in the industry.

We’ve had to adapt to new online technologies and ways of communicating with our clients. Live video valuations over WhatsApp and FaceTime are now common place, not to mention endless Zoom calls.

While live-online bidding has been popular for some time, most salerooms are now solely online – and all the better for it. We have seen record prices across the board this year in almost every category, and this trend corresponds with a marked increase in new bidder numbers, more bidder engagement and higher average lot values than ever before.

One more victim of the outbreak has been printed catalogues, we stopped producing them in March and have seen no ill effects – I can’t see them returning in this new digital age. Our team has worked tirelessly to ensure this challenging and difficult year has been a positive one and I think we will look back on 2020 as a key turning point in the industry.

Oliver Miller

managing director, auctioneer and valuer at Bishop & Miller Auctions in Suffolk The pandemic saw auction prices across the board rise, most noticeably in unique statement pieces, such as piece of sculpture or furniture, to act as a focal point for a room – no doubt due to people spending more time at home and looking for that special finishing touch.

We predict an evolving interest in Scandinavian, and more notably Swedish 19th-century furniture, in 2021 which looks fantastic in contemporary homes.

Photographic images will also have a strong showing in the auction rooms next year, from the earlier topographical images to striking 20thcentury images of cityscapes. People are being really imaginative in their homes’ look and feel. So 2021 will be all about pieces that look amazing rather than being purely functional.

Alice Roberton

PR, social media and online events, Arthur Swallow Fairs, image credit Tamsyn Morgans During lockdown and the halt on fairs, we quickly adapted by hosting Insta events and, through this, saw many established dealers up their online presence along with new dealers emerging onto the scene. With this has come some excellent stock. With people now generally more home-based we’ve definitely noticed a surge in buyers investing in madeto-last decorative antiques. What’s also struck us is how the Covid-19 situation has contributed to an important change in people’s buying habits in terms of embracing re-use – be it antiques, vintage or salvage.

We genuinely feel that people are buying with more consideration for longevity and we think that 2021 could be a busy year for the antiques trade in general including fairs. One huge positive for us is that we now host actual and virtual events, offering dealers more opportunity to sell, and giving buyers greater access to wonderful pieces.

Freya Simms

Chief executive, LAPADA After the onset of the Covid-19 restrictions we launched a webinar series called ‘LAPADA Leaders’ where I had the pleasure of interviewing leaders from the art, design and heritage sectors, and was able to get first-hand feedback on trends and demand.

Interior designers have experienced a surge in commissions as people seek to improve or edit their surroundings to visually create a home/life balance (which has also been reflected in online sales of art and antiques at www. lapada.org). Particular attention is being paid to furniture and decorative objects that are handmade, one-of-a-kind, display excellent craftsmanship and are full of colour and texture. This chimes perfectly with our members’ stock that not only ticks all the boxes above but is sustainable in addition.

Where to invest is always a difficult question, as pleasure in an item should be the only return on investment you really need. However, ‘brown’ is coming back and still relatively affordable when buying Edwardian or Victorian pieces (even modern outlets of repro are ditching some of the cream-painted furniture in favour of natural wood patinas).

The greatest challenges facing the trade at present are preparing for business post-Brexit, with the accompanying red tape, as well as finding and maintaining new and successful online routes to market post-Covid. Although news of vaccine will literally be a shot in the arm for the industry, with fair organisers in particular breathing a large and collective sigh of relief.

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 57

ANTIQUES UNDER THE HAMMER In January

SALEROOM SPOTLIGHT

A collection of natural history and taxidermy from generations of a famous hunting family goes under the hammer in North Yorkshire in January

D

ating from the early 1870s to the 1930s, the collection was amassed by several generations of the Heber-Percy family and housed in the family seat of Hodnet Hall in Shropshire, where the family still lives today.

The collection, bagged on frequent expeditions around the world, was originally given pride of place in the main hall. But, after the house was converted to a convalescent home for wounded officers in WWI, it was relocated to the stables where it remained – even when the building was turned into tearooms for visitors to the hall’s spectacular gardens.

Now the restaurant is due to be refurbished, and the trophies are to be sold at Tennants Auctioneers in January 2021.

GAME LOT Using written accounts and photograph albums in the possession of the current family, specialists at the Leyburn auctioneers have recreated the remarkable history of their adventurous forebears.

Among an extraordinary litany of voyages around the world were two hunting trips made by Algernon Heber-Percy (1845-1911) and his wife Alice to Canada

Left A New Zealand tahr, c.1936, New Zealand.

Mounted by Peter Spicer & Son’s Taxidermy, Leamington, with his trade mark to verso. It is signed Thar, Mt Cook, New Zealand, A.G.H.P, 1936 (A.G.H.P may be Algernon George HeberPercy 1904-1936). It has an estimate of £450£640 at this month’s sale Right Indian wolf, 1887, Oudh, northern India.

It is signed Indian Wolf, Oudh, R.J.H.P, Dec 5th 1887 (R.J.H.P is Lt. Col. Reginald Josceline Heber-Percy 18491922). It has an estimate of £450-£650 Below First Buffalo

Hunt, a watercolour from a published travelogue of the Canadian hunting trip of Algernon and Alice Heber-Percy, not in sale and reproduced with kind permission of the Heber-Percy family

in 1877 and 1878. The pair travelled by horse and wagon-train across the vast prairies west of Manitoba to the mountains bordering British Columbia.

Their journeys are recounted in a privately-printed book – illustrated with photographs and watercolour paintings – which include accounts such as a thrilling horse-back chase hunting down a buffalo. The trophy is now up for sale on January 15 with an estimate of £700-£900. The book is a fascinating account of their expeditions, hunts and encounters in a vast wilderness with both native tribes and hard-bitten settlers.

DERRING DO Many of the trophies in the sale were taken by Hugh Lewis Heber-Percy (1853-1925) who embarked on numerous trips to Australia, Africa, India, the Far East and beyond. Details of quarry bagged are meticulously recorded, but personal recollections of these extraordinary journeys across the globe are sparse – six-month expeditions condensed into a few sentences.

Tantalising glimpses into his adventures include: “I burned Alice’s umbrella in lava on Vesuvius”, “Charles our headman was bitten by a snake but recovered with a bottle of whisky”, and “Were wrecked on Cape **, Philippines, lived under tarpaulin 6 days, rescued by S.S. Australia on way to Hong Kong.”

His game book is accompanied by a photograph album, in which snapshots of shooting parties both home and abroad are captured, along with signatures of

58 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

AUCTION fact file

all those involved. One such party was during a trip to India in 1901, during which time both Queen Victoria and Hugh’s father, Algernon Charles Heber-Percy, died.

Staying at Cooch Behar Palace with the maharajah, he and his fellow guns embarked on a long hunt, which resulted in a bag that included 11 tigers, five leopards, three bears and three rhinoceroses.

WHAT: A historical collection of natural history and taxidermy from Hodnet Hall When: January 15 Where: The Auction Centre, Harmby Road, Leyburn, North Yorkshire, DL8 5SG Viewing: January 14, 10am-5pm and morning of sale from 8am, and online at www.tennants.co.uk Above left The family on a hunting trip, not in sale and reproduced by kind permission of the Heber-Percy family Left A cased diorama of Indian birds, c.

1872, signed Henry Shaw, Salop, including two juvenile Gharial crocodiles. It is signed India Collected R.J.H.P (Lt. Col. Reginald Josceline Heber-Percy, 1849-1922). It has an estimate of £6,000£8,000 Below Blyth’s hornbill,

c. 1900, Papau New Guinea. It is signed Toucan, Papua, A.H.H.P, 1900 (A.H.H.P is Algernon Hugh HeberPercy, 1869-1941).

It has an estimate of £350-£550

IN MY OPINION...

We asked Tennants’ natural history and taxidermy specialist Robbie Bright for his sale highlights How impressive is the collection?

This collection is extraordinary. Not only in the diversity of specimens, but their widespread geographical origins. Considering the modes of travel in the late 19th century, distances covered, and the fact the trips were made by one family it is even more impressive. Multiple trips to North America, India, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Australia and Africa were undertaken, each spanning several months. The Heber-Percy family’s commitment and vigour amazes me. The collection includes many rare and interesting species, such as the Tibetan Urial and Himalayan Tahr, which could not be collected today due to hunting restrictions and unsafe regions to hunt in.

RIght The impressive diorama has an estimate of £10,000-£15,000

Have you got a personal highlight?

My favourite has to be the cased diorama of Australian marsupials, animals and birds, mounted

by Rowland Ward, c. 1892 (above). Measuring 8ft by 6½ft, it includes a full family of kangaroos, a koala on a branch, a python coiled around another branch and a pelican. The quality of execution also highlights the artistry of the late Victorian taxidermists.

Where do you expect interest to come from?

The US, Holland, Belgium, Australia and the UK all have discerning and dedicated collectors who covet rare pieces such as these. The fact that the collection has never been available on the open market before will certainly create a lot of interest.

Nile crocodile, 1897, Mdingidingi River, South Africa.

It is signed Crocodile, Mdingidingi River, H.L.H.P, Aug 1st 1897 (H.L.H.P is Hugh Lewis Heber-Percy, 1858-1934). It has an estimate of £450-£600

‘One such party was during a trip to India in 1901, the game book recorded a bag that included 11 tigers, five leopards, three bears and three rhinoceroses’

What tips have you got for new collectors?

Buy quality and start small. Colourful and interesting is always good – a pair of large antlers at the top of a staircase is a classic decorative device. Avoid tired, damaged or poor-quality taxidermy and keep a particular eye out for insect damage or infestation, which could spread to the rest of your collection.

Avoid large, cased foxes or pheasants (there is a reason they are cheap). Look for work by named artists such as Peter Spicer, Rowland Ward and Henry Murray. Many pieces are signed in the case, or there may be a label on the back. Be a detective and take a torch to search out these small trade labels as it makes a huge difference to the price – and they are not always spotted by the auction house.

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 59

ANTIQUES EXPERTS’ Christmas decorations

Special Effects Discover the antique baubles, bells and brooches our favourite TV celebrities couldn’t be without at Christmas Kate Flitcroft

Auctioneer and head of jewellery and silver at Lyon & Turnbull in London, and a gemmologist and silver specialist on BBC’s Antiques Roadshow I enjoy wearing my grandmother’s diamond and sapphire ring at Christmas parties and special occasions. It makes me feel connected to her though she’s no longer with us.

60 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

Steven Moore

Ceramics and glass specialist for BBC Antiques Roadshow and regular on Antiques Road Trip This Derby cream tureen was a relative’s and I often use it on high days and holidays. I don’t really ‘do’ Christmas decorations. I’m often in Venice, just not this year.

Marc Allum

Miscellaneous specialist on BBC Antiques Roadshow, Antique Collecting columnist, broadcaster and speaker Some 20 years ago I purchased this charming and eccentric picture by the Victorian artist Alfred Morgan. His famous picture Omnibus Ride to Piccadilly Circus, Mr Gladstone Travelling, is well known, but this endearing oil – Love Carries Away First Prize – has an attractive quirkiness that always ensures it a central place in an annual Christmas tableaux. Cupid sporting a sprig of mistletoe and trudging through the snow with a huge goose seems to evoke a true sense of Christmas past and I always surround the picture with holly and laurel. For the rest of the year, it hangs in a less obvious place but is no less admired for its wonderful evocation of the artist’s festive originality.

Catherine Southon

Izzy Balmer

Expert on BBC Antiques Road Trip and auctioneer and valuer at Wessex Auction Rooms in Wiltshire As a child I was in awe of this Georg Jensen brooch designed by Hugo Lisberg that mum wore every Christmas. I would always excitedly help decorate the tree, set out the nativity scene, watch dad balancing on the ladder to hang the fairy lights and, once finished, mum would go to her jewellery box and retrieve the brooch.

This was my favourite part of the day because I adored this brooch. Mum would say: “Izzie, one day when you’re older you can wear this.” One year when I asked her why she wasn’t wearing it, she brushed me away with a vague reply.

Christmas day arrived and under the tree I found a small box-shaped parcel with my name on it. I slowly opened it (mum is a great present wrapper) to reveal a black box. I removed the lid and inside was the brooch.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I now proudly wear my mum’s brooch every Christmas.

Kent and Surrey-based auctioneer and regular on BBC’s Antiques Road Trip and Bargain Hunt As with all children, I was always desperate to help put up the Christmas tree – usually hanging every differently-coloured, mis-matched bauble in the box – rather than the carefully colourcoordinated decorations that my mother had selected.

My favourite decoration, by far, was a very cheaply made, but completely adorable, cardboard and rubber angel. Unlike our other selection of Christmas angels, this one wasn’t neat and tidy, but instead had a mop of blonde, unkempt hair, the cheekiest smile and fat cheeks. My mother used to say it was a bit like me, as my hair was the same colour and I would never keep still long enough for it to be brushed (and I was often up to mischief). So now the same unkempt angel comes out every year to remind me of my mum and a very happy childhood.

‘I was lucky enough to buy it when it came up for auction many years later. It has had stapled repairs, which to me shows just how much this was prized even a century ago’ ANTIQUE COLLECTING 61

ANTIQUES EXPERTS’ Christmas decorations Kate Bliss

Antiques expert, TV presenter and a regular on BBC’s Bargain Hunt, Secret Dealers and Flog It! This Georgian chestnut basket and stand has been handed down the family for generations. Although considered old-fashioned by many, I have always loved pearlware and particularly like the basketwork pattern and printed floral sprigs on this piece. For me, it represents family – and happy Christmases of the past with loved ones who are now gone.

I remember it from my childhood, holding chestnuts for roasting, but these days when it comes out at Christmas it is usually piled high with fruit or chocolates. When I was telling its history to my children, they were fascinated to hear it was more than 200 years old. I hope it will continue to be part of their family Christmases in many years to come.

Elizabeth Talbot

Auctioneer at Suffolk’s TW Gaze, and familiar face on BBC’s Flog it!

Christmas exudes so much 19th-century magic in my household that I’ve struggled to make a choice from the collection which emerges every year. However, because the current edition of Antique Collecting magazine spans the turn of the year, I judge one late-Victorian jug to be most fitting. Dating from c.1885–1895, this piece of pottery was made by Cochran & Co, St. Rollox, Glasgow, an important business in the city, with a long history and a diverse production line. In the 1880s it produced a series of Christmas jugs including ‘Good Cheer’, and this one, entitled ‘Auld Acquaintance’ which I bought many years ago at auction. While it was no bargain, we do experience double the enjoyment as it is turned around part way through the celebrations to display ‘A Merry Christmas’ on one side and ‘A Guid New Year’ on the other. The fact it is Scottish is the icing on my Christmas cake.

62 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

David Harper

Antiques expert, writer, presenter and regular on TV shows such as the BBC’s Celebrity Antiques Road Trip and Bargain Hunt The figure in the middle is an original Chinese Ming Dynasty pottery musician that I’ve owned for more than 20 years, meaning it is one of the very few things I’ve never tried to sell. I love him, he’s so full of character and always make us smile. Every Christmas he comes out of his cabinet and sits on a table or fireplace. We put a ribbon around his neck (scarf) and when the Ming Man comes out, that’s when Christmas officially begins.

The other two figures are recreations I’ve made this year. Using the original as a model, I’m making 25 contemporary re-creations of ‘Ming Man Musician’, each one hand made out of a sandstone mix (heavier than the original) and then hand painted. Signed and numbered, I’ve almost sold them all, with only a couple to finish off before Christmas.

Caroline Hawley Partner in Hawleys Auctioneers in East Yorkshire and expert on BBC’s Bargain Hunt and Flog it!

I first saw and fell in love with this gorgeous, early 19th-century Spode supper set as a young child when I would visit my friend, Sarah, after school. It was always in pride of place on a long, oak refectory table in the entrance hall. I was lucky enough to buy it when it came up for auction many years later. It has had stapled repairs, which to me shows just how much it was prized even a century ago. For many years I have held a drinks party on Christmas Eve and never fail to use this for dips and nibbles.

It fits the bill perfectly and each year as I fill it up I am reminded of both good friends and Christmases long, long ago. I’m delighted to be able to share it with you here, as this year, due to Covid, I will not be hosting my usual soirée!

Roo Irvine

Antique dealer at Kilcreggan Antiques in Argyll & Bute, Scotland, and familiar face on BBC Bargain Hunt and Antiques Road Trip This stunning piece is one of my favourites, and it definitely only comes out at Christmas. It is evocative of the celebratory magic of yuletide with the joy of friendship and socialising.

And the shape is about as festive as you can get.

The Asprey & Co bell-shaped cocktail shaker is quintessentially 1930s art deco and you can imagine the gatherings that it would have been used at.

Sultry jazz, elegant cocktails, the clink of glasses and the tinkle of laughter comes to mind – all of which sounds a lot like Christmas. Pair that with the festive bell shape, and the high-quality silver plate, which perfectly reflect the Christmas lights and you instantly want to fill it up, and give it a good shake. It has the quality, the top-tier name, and is reminiscent of all that is wonderful about Christmas – so, cheers!

‘For me, it represents family and happy Christmas times of the past with loved ones who are now gone’

Angus Ashworth

Auctioneer and owner of Ryedale Auctioneers in North Yorkshire and expert on Antiques Road Trip More vintage than antique and sentimental rather than valuable, this Santa jug is a Christmas tradition in the Ashworth household, starting with my mum who remembers as a young girl collecting the tokens from Birdseye custard powder to get a Santa jug. She always used it at Christmas filled with rum sauce for the Christmas pudding – a tradition that continued throughout my childhood. The Christmas table would not be right unless the Santa jug was out. Mum has yet to relinquish her jug to me or any of my three siblings, so when, amazingly, one came up for sale in my auction I had to buy it (probably at record price). But it does mean the tradition now continues with my own children in our home every Christmas, which they love just as much.

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 63

COLLECTING GUIDES Dolls

Hello

DOLLY! As well as topping Christmas wish-lists for decades, dolls are highly collectable. Specialist Andrew Smith unwraps the most sought after

Below right This unusual

Oriental doll by Armand Marseille sold for £170 in 2018, image courtesy of Gildings Auctioneer

I

n many ways, Christmas as we know it can be traced back to Victorian times. As the owner of precisely 132 wooden dolls which kept her company in her largely solitary childhood, Queen Victoria went on to become a keen giver of dolls as gifts, including at Christmas.

Armand Marseille (1856-1925) who founded a company of the same name, is one of the best known names in dolls from the late-Victorian era.

This German manufacturer could produce up to a thousand bisque doll heads per day, with production running from 1885 until 1930. Bisque dolls are manufactured from unglazed porcelain to give a realistic look to the face. Armand Marseille manufactured the heads only, with the bodies – which were typically made from leather or rag – sourced from other manufacturers. Separate brands of

64 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

Dolls can be cute as well as collectable, image Shutterstock

the baby, child and character dolls included Dream Baby, Darling Dolly, Queen Louise and Floradora.

Today, Armand Marseille dolls regularly come up at auction, with the commonest designs coming from mould 370 and mould 390. While most Armand Marseille dolls are not valuable and can be expected to make around £40-£50 at auction, they are still very sought after and recognisable by their stamps containing the initials A.M. Other German dollmakers to look out for at auction include Gebruder Heubach, Koppelsdorf and Shutzmeister & Quendt.

FRENCH DOLLS French dolls from the 19th century, such as those manufactured by Jumeau from the 1840s, are also collectable, arguably more so than their German rivals as the French

A NEW ERA

manufacturers could not compete with the mass market manufacturing techniques of the Germans.

An alternative to the popular bisque head doll was the wax doll, which was an English speciality from manufacturers such as the Italian-sounding yet English brands Pierotti and Montanari. The Pierotti family was in business for over a century from 1793, with Montanari presenting a flourishing attraction at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The catalogue for the exhibition described the Montanari display: “In the North Transept Gallery, Class 29, Case 122, we find a rich display of model wax and rag dolls by Madame Montanari. These playthings are indeed very beautifully modelled, the hair inserted into the head, eyelashes, and eyebrows. They represent the different stages of childhood, and are arranged in the case so as to form interesting family groups. They include portraits of several of the royal children.”

These dolls have poured wax heads and limbs, and hair-stuffed bodies. The detail required meant that a number of people had to be employed in the manufacture of antique dolls, with a cheaper version being wax over composition doll, made by dipping the head in wax and using a composite material consisting of substances like corn starch, resin, sawdust and glue for the body. We sold one such example for £50, but poured wax dolls can sell for much more, particularly if they have a story behind them. For example, in 2018, we auctioned a poured wax doll in her original muslin, satin and lace outfit and listed in a previous sale as a gift from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert presented at their visit to Scone Palace in 1842, for £750.

Clearly, wax is more vulnerable to wear and tear than bisque, so wax dolls in good condition are rarer.

Whether wax or bisque, the most prized dolls from this era feature sleeping eyes.

By the 1950s, the emergence from WWII saw an explosion of new brands and a move towards the female-formed plastic fashion doll popular to this day.

In the late 1950s, Pedigree’s Brighton Belle, a large doll with walking legs, bright red lips and a range of accessories, featured in many a Christmas wish list. And 1959 was a huge year in doll history as it was the year Mattel launched Barbie, with her range of exciting outfits, including a black and white striped swimsuit.

Mint condition dolls with boxes from this era can be very valuable. A first edition Barbie has been known to make over £20,000. First edition Barbies can be identified by a small hole in the soles of the feet. Barbie was joined by Ken in 1961, but it was not until 1980 that a Hispanic or African American Barbie appeared.

THE PRE-WAR YEARS Although dolls remained as popular as ever, the 1920s saw a craze for the ‘boudoir doll’, which was designed as an ornament or even an accessory for the fashionable young women of the time. With papier-mâché, silk or cloth faces and cloth bodies, the dolls emulated the long slim limbs, bobbed hair and flapper styles that were the aesthetic ideal of the time.

Soft and tactile materials like felt were also popular in the 1920s. One such was made by the Birminghambased maker Chad Valley and came in the shape of a ‘Mabel Lucie Attwell’ felt doll.

Above left Vintage dolls at a recent fair, image Shutterstock Above A Victorian wax over composition head doll sold for £50, image courtesy of Gildings Auctioneers Right A large French

Tete Jumeau with a bisque head and large glass eyes in her original outfit, complete with brooch, sold for £1,050 in 2019

‘Due to the popularity of The Sonny and Cher Show, a Cher doll was hugely popular in 1976, with a Diana Ross doll also featuring on many a ‘70s Christmas list. Cher, with her high heels and matching evening gown, can make between £150 and £300 at auction’ ANTIQUE COLLECTING 65

COLLECTING GUIDES Dolls THE BRITISH BARBIE In 1963, Pedigree launched Sindy, the UK’s more sophisticated and slightly larger in figure answer to Barbie. Accessories and clothes were a huge part of Sindy’s appeal, making up 70 per cent of sales, and she was soon joined by sister, Patch, and boyfriend, Paul.

The growing influence of celebrity on dolls was apparent, too, with outfits inspired by stars like Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy. An original, boxed Sindy can make up to £500 at auction.

From 1964 onwards, Christmas lists also featured Palitoy’s rival Tressy doll, named for her luxuriant locks.

Tressy is much harder to find today as fewer of these dolls were made.

Then in 1972, Palitoy launched the diminutive Pippa, who went on to have over 30 variations of hair and skin colour produced using just three head moulds.

Despite being marketed as “the pocket money fashion doll that puts fashion in your pocket”, today’s collectors will pay between £100 and £1,000 for boxed Pippa dolls. Recently, Gildings sold Pippa’s friend, Mandy, as part of a collection of dolls for £55.

Christmas 1973 saw a return to baby dolls, with Kenner’s Baby Alive in demand thanks to her ability to eat, drink and pass water. And due to the popularity of The Sonny and Cher Show, a Cher doll was hugely popular in 1976, with a Diana Ross doll also featuring on many a ‘70s Christmas list. Cher, with her high heels and matching evening gown can make between £150 and £300 at auction.

Even those who don’t recognise Attwell’s name will be familiar with her whimsical illustrations of cherubic children which famously featured at J.M Barrie’s request in an early edition of Peter Pan. The Chad Valley name first appeared on toys in around 1920. This was a new trademark for a printing company that started making children’s games in around 1830. The name ‘Chad Valley Works’, reflecting its site in the valley of the River Chad, soon adopted the simpler Chad Valley as its main marque. Boy dolls proved very popular with the young ladies of the era, who loved their tweed sports jackets with felt collars, and gun bags.

In the 1930s, dolls were still mainly made from composition. This technique, dating back to the 19th century, was marketed as unbreakable, but over time cracks appeared, resulting in some dolls being given a coat of varnish to try to prevent this.

Above left Dolls have featured on Christmas wish-lists for years, image Shutterstock Left Despite a stained face and clothing, with the stitching undone on one sock, a Chad Valley ‘Mabel Lucie Attwell’ felt doll sold for £210, image courtesy of Gildings Auctioneers Right An Armand

Marseille bisque-head doll stamped model 370 sold for £38, image courtesy of Gildings Auctioneers

66 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

21ST-CENTURY DOLLS 2001 saw the arrival of the fashion-forward, almondeyed Bratz dolls. Although these dolls and their accessories do not have much of a collectors’ market yet, I believe they will in the future. First manufactured in the late 1990s, Spice Girl dolls were popular into the early part of the 2000s. Gildings sold a sealed set of five Spice Girls dolls for £50, which could prove to be a good investment for the buyer as these dolls are set to soar in popularity with collectors.

As Christmas 2020 approaches, the appetite for dolls continues unabated with the current craze for L.O.L dolls on many a wish-list, along with a Disney Frozen Elsa Doll and Barbie’s Fresh’n’Fun Food Truck. This year Barbie is also joining forces with another collectors’ favourite in the form of Barbie Star Wars dolls. These dolls are sure to be played with and enjoyed into 2021 and beyond, but any who happen to remain in their boxes will eventually find homes as collectors’ items of the future.

A CRAZE FOR CUTENESS The worldwide craze for Cabbage Patch Kids dolls was a precursor to the ugly scenes of the modern Black Friday, with Cabbage Patch riots, some involving baseball bats, being reported in US department stores at Christmas 1983 as people fought to secure the year’s must-have toy.

These dolls began life as ‘The Little People’ when 21-year-old art student Xavier Roberts began making dolls using quilting and needle moulding techniques.

By the time Coleco put them into mass production in 1982, they had vinyl heads and soft fabric bodies.

Arguably, the mass-produced Cabbage Patch Kids were more covetable at the time than they are now, but Roberts’ original dolls, which came with an adoption fee as opposed to a price tag, are far more collectable, with buyers paying more than $5,000 for a unique set of Little People quintuplets when they were new.

The 1990s saw a craze for foamed, wing-spinning Sky Dancers, a spin-off from an animated show from the era. Tiny plastic Polly Pockets in their matching cases were also hugely popular, with the scarce early versions by Blue Bird coveted by collectors today.

Above A craze for the Cabbage Patch dolls caused shop riots in the 1980s, image Shutterstock Right A Cher doll can

make up to £300, image Shutterstock

Below A set of five Spice

Girl dolls by Galoob sold for £50, image courtesy of Gildings Auctioneers

Andrew Smith is the in-house toy specialist at Gildings, a family-run auction house in Market Harborough which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2020. His specialisms include die-cast toys from the pre and post-war eras and popular emerging markets such as vinyl records, early digital and computing and 1970s/’80s toys and memorabilia.

Gildings next sale is on December 15, for more details go to www.gildings.co.uk ANTIQUE COLLECTING 67

FAIRS Calendar Because this list is compiled in advance, alterations or cancellations to the fairs listed can occur and it is not possible to notify readers of the changes.

We strongly advise anyone wishing to attend a fair especially if they have to travel any distance, to telephone the organiser to confirm the details given.

LONDON: Inc. Greater London Sunbury Antiques 01932 230946 www.sunburyantiques.com Sunbury Antiques Market, Kempton Park Race Course, , Sunbury-on-Thames, Middlesex TW16 5AQ, 12 Jan, 26 Jan SOUTH EAST AND EAST ANGLIA: including Beds, Cambs, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex.

Dovehouse Fine Antiques Fair 07952689717 www.dovehousefine antiquesfairs.com Antiques Fair, Dorking Halls, Reigate Road, Dorking, 24 Jan IACF 01636 702326 www.iacf.co.uk South of England Showground, Ardingly, Nr Haywards Heath, West Sussex, RH17 6TL, 19-20 Jan Long Melford Antiques 07837 497617 Long Melford Antiques and Vintage Fair, The Old School, Hall Street, Long Melford, Suffolk, CO10 9DX, 30-31 Jan Newmarket Antiques Fair 0333 358 3688 www.newmarketantiquesfair.co.uk Newmarket Antiques & Collectors Fair, Rowley Mile Racecourse, Cambridge Road, Newmarket, Suffolk, CB8 0TF, 31 Jan Watson Fairs 07919 022352 Watton Antiques & Collectors Fair, The Queens Hall, Norwich Road, Watton, Norfolk, IP25 6DA, 10 Jan SOUTH WEST: including Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Wiltshire.

68 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

SP Fairs 01278 784912 The Giant Shepton Flea Market, The Royal Bath and West Showground, Shepton Mallet, Somerset, BA4 6QN, 10 Jan

EAST MIDLANDS including Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Notts.

Guildhall Antiques Fairs 07583 410862 www.guildhallantiquefairs.co.uk Antique, Collectors & Vintage Fair, Ashby-de-la-Zouch Hood Park Leisure Centre, Ashby-de-laZouch, Leics., LE65 1HU, 1 Jan Halcyon Fairs 07803 543467 www.halcyonfairs.com Buxton Antiques and Collectors Fair, The Pavilion Gardens, St John Road, Buxton, Derbyshire, SK17 6BE, 30-31 Jan WEST MIDLANDS

including Birmingham, Coventry, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire B2B Events, 07774 147197 or 07771 725302 www.b2bevents.info Malvern Flea and Collectors’ Fair, Three Counties Showground, Malvern, Worcs., WR13 6NW, (with inside and outside dealers) 13 Dec, 17 Jan Continuity Fairs 01584 873 634 www.continuityfairs.co.uk Bingley Hall Antiques Fair, Stafford Showground Ltd, Weston Rd, Stafford, ST18 0BD 12-13 Dec Birmingham Clock and Watch Fair, 07598072645 www.thebirminghamclockand watchfair.com The Motor Cycle Museum, Birmingham, Coventry Road, Bickenhill, Warwickshire B92 0EJ, 17 Jan

Malvern Flea & Collectors Market

Three Counties Showground, Worcestershire, WR13 6NW.

2020: Sunday 13th December 2021: Sunday 17th January Sunday 7th February Sunday 7th March Easter Monday 5th April Holiday Monday 31st May Sunday 27th June Sunday 25th July Holiday Monday 30th August Sunday 19th September Sunday 10th October Sunday 5th December Entrance: 7.30am - 3.30pm - £5

Detling Antiques, Vintage & Collectors Market Kent County Showground, Detling, ME14 3JF.

2021: Sat 27th - Sun 28th February Sat 17th - Sun 18th April Sat 19th - Sun 20th June Sat 11th - Sun 12th September Sat 30th - Sun 31st October Saturday: Early: 8.30am - £6 • Saturday: 10am-4.30pm - £5 • Sunday: 10am-3.30pm - £4

Edinburgh Antiques, Vintage & Collectors Market Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, EH28 8NB.

2021: Sat 15th - Sun 16th May Sat 4th - Sun 5th September Sat 27th - Sun 28th November Saturday: Early: 8.30am - £6 • Saturday: 10am-4.30pm - £5 • Sunday: 10am-3.30pm - £4

Malvern Antiques & Collectors Market

NO outside pitches

The Severn Hall, Three Counties Showground, Malvern, Worcs, WR13 6NW.

Sunday 7th November 2021 Antiques, Art Deco, collectables & much more Early: 8.30am - £4

Entrance: 10am - 4pm - £3

Please check www.b2bevents.info in case the dates have changed or been cancelled

Tel: 01636 676531 www.b2bevents.info

AUCTION Calendar Because this list is compiled in advance, alterations or cancellations to the auctions listed can occur and it is not possible to notify readers of the changes.

We strongly advise anyone wishing to attend an auction especially if they have to travel any distance, to telephone the organiser to confirm the details given.

LONDON: Inc. Greater London Bonhams, New Bond St., W1 020 7447 7447 www.bonhams.com Fine Watches and Wristwatches, Dec 9 Modern and Contemporary Art, Dec 9 Prints and Multiples, Dec 15 Fine Clocks, Dec 16 Fine Decorative Arts, 1200-1900, Dec 17 Bonhams, Knightsbridge, SW7 020 7393 3900 www.bonhams.com Jewellery, Dec 9 Fine Watches and Wristwatches, Dec 9 The John Alchin and Ralph Kenber Collections, Dec 15 Fine Glass and British Ceramics, Dec 15 Modern British and Irish Art, Dec 16 Fine Books, Atlases, Manuscripts & Historical Photographs, Dec 17 The Gentleman’s Library Sale, Jan 27 Chiswick Auctions, 1 Colville Rd, Chiswick, W3 8BL 020 8992 4442 www.chiswickauctions.co.uk Interiors Homes & Antiques, Dec 7 Christie’s, King St., London, SW1 020 7839 9060 www.christies.com Professor, Dealer, Collector: Sandra Hindman Curates a Selection of Manuscript Paintings (Online), Ends Dec 14 Italian Drawings From The Robert Landolt Collection, Dec 8 Valuable Books and Manuscripts, Dec 9 The Joe Setton Collection: from Pre-Raphaelites to Last Romantics, Dec 10 Finest and Rarest Wines and Spririts, Dec 11 Quentin Blake: 200 Drawings (Online), Ends Dec 16 Dix Noonan Webb, 16 Bolton St, Piccadilly, W1J 8BQ

020 7016 1700 www.dnw.co.uk Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria, Jan 13 North Yorkshire Moors Collection, Part IV: Coins and Medals, Jan 21 Dreweatts London 16-17 Pall Mall, St James’s, London, SW1Y 5LU 020 7839 8880 www.dreweatts.com Western Manuscripts and Minatures, Dec 7 Elmwood’s Auctioneers 101 Talbot Road, London, W11 2AT 0207 096 8933 www.elmwoods.co.uk Fine jewellery, Dec 9 Fine Christmas Jewellery, Dec 16 Forum Auctions 220 Queenstown Road, London SW8 4LP, 020 7871 2640 www.forumauctions.co.uk Forum Auctions @ Artsy, Dec 16 Books and Works on Paper (Online), Dec 17, Jan 7, Jan 21 Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper, Jan 27 Hansons Auctioneers The Normansfield Theatre, 2A Langdon Park, Teddington TW11 9PS 0207 018 9300 www.hansonsauctioneers.com December Antiques, Collectors & Specialist Auction, Dec 12 Fine Textiles, Embroidery, Jewellery & George Turner Auction (online), Dec 16 Lyon & Turnbull 22 Connaught Street, London, W2 2AF 0207 930 9115 www.lyonandturnbull.com None listed Olympia Auction 25 Blythe Road, London, W14 OPD 020 7806 5541 www.olympiaauctions.com None Listed Morton and Eden Nash House, St. George Street, London, W1S 2FQ 020 7493 5344 www.mortonandeden.com None listed

Phillips, 30 Berkeley Square, London, W1J 6EX 020 7318 4010 www.phillips.com New Now, Dec 15 Lux, Lucis, Luci - A Declension of Lights: Online Auction (Online), Dec 16 Roseberys, Knights Hill, SE27 020 8761 2522 www.roseberys.co.uk Jewellery and Watches, Dec 8 Impressionist, Modern, Post War & Contemporary Art, Dec 9 Sotheby’s, New Bond St., W1 020 7293 5000 www.sothebys.com English Literature, History, Children’s (Online) Dec 1-8 19th and 20th-Century Sculpture (Online), ends Dec 9 Highlights from European & British Art, (Online), ends Dec 9 The Art of Giving: The Luxury Wish List (Online), ends Dec 10 Fine Wines (Online), ends Dec 15 The Weekly Edit Fine Jewels (Online), Dec 10-17 A Treasury of Vertu: Important Gold Boxes from a Private Family Collection, Dec 10 Treasures, Dec 10 Old Masters Evening Sale, Dec 10 SOUTH EAST AND EAST ANGLIA: Inc. Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex Beeston Auctions, Unit 12, Paynes Business Park, Dereham Road, Beeston, Norfolk, PE32 2NQ 01328 598080 www.beestonauctions.co.uk Antiques, Collectables & Interiors, Dec 17 Bishop and Miller, 19 Charles Industrial Estate, Stowmarket, Suffolk, IP14 5AH 01449 673088 www.bishopandmiller auctions.co.uk

Pictures, Dec 7 Mr Bishop’s Jewellery Auction, Dec 8 Coins, Dec 8 The Christmas Auction, Dec 15 Silver and Fine Art, Dec 16 Period Oak and Folk, Dec 17 Music & Memorabilia, Jan 20 Ceramics, Jan 26 Mr Bishop Collectables, Jan 28 Bellmans Newpound, Wisborough Green, West Sussex, RH14 0AZ 01403 700858 www.bellmans.co.uk Sllver, Jewellery and Watches, Dec 7 Wines and Spirits, Dec 7 Printed Books, Maps and Manuscripts including Fine Bindings and Science Books from the Collection of Peter and Margarethe Braune part II, Dec 8 Ewhurst Park: A Single Owner Sale, Dec 9 Interiors, including Asian works of Art, Silver, Coins, Wine & Spirits, Jan 26, 27, 28 The Friday Sale, At No Reserve (live online), Jan 29 Burstow & Hewett, The Auction Gallery, Lower Lake, Battle, East Sussex,TN33 0AT 01424 772 374 www.burstowandhewett.co.uk Antiques, Dec 9, Jan 27 Fine Art, Dec 11, Jan 28 Cheffins Clifton House, Clifton Road, Cambridge, CB1 7EA 01223 213343 www.cheffins.co.uk The Interiors Sale, Dec 10, Jan 21 Clarke and Simpson Campsea Ashe, Nr. Wickham Market, Suffolk, IP13 0PS 01728 746323 www.clarkeandsimpson.co.uk The Monday Sale, Dec 7, 14, 21 Antique and Fine Art, Dec 9 Durrants Auctions The Old School House, Peddars Lane, Beccles, Suffolk, NR34 9UE 01502 713490 ANTIQUE COLLECTING 69

AUCTION Calendar Because this list is compiled in advance, alterations or cancellations to the auctions listed can occur and it is not possible to notify readers of the changes.

We strongly advise anyone wishing to attend an auction especially if they have to travel any distance, to telephone the organiser to confirm the details given.

www.durrantsauctions.com Contents of a local Georgian Town House, incl. Wines and Spirits, Dec 11 Clocks and Watches including a Private Collection of Pocket Watch Stands, Dec 12 Ewbank’s, London Rd, Send, Woking, Surrey, London Rd, GU23 7LN 01483 223 101 www.ewbankauctions.co.uk Jewellery, Watches and Coins, Dec 8 Silver & Fine Art, Dec 9 Antiques & Clocks, Dec 11 Deck of Cards, Charity Sale, Dec 11 Fine Wines and Spirits, Dec 17 Antique & Collectors’ inc. Jewellery & Silver, Jan 6, Jan 27 Decorative Arts, Jan 28 Contemporary Art & Modern British Paintings, Jan 28 Excalibur Auctions Limited Unit 16 Abbots Business Park Primrose Hill Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, WD4 8FR 020 3633 0913 wwwexcaliburauctions.com Vintage Toys and Model Railways Auction, Jan 16 Lacy Scott & Knight, 10 Risbygate St, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, IP33 3AA 01284 748 623 www.lskauctioncentre.co.uk Medals, MIlitaria and Country Pursuits, Dec 11 Wine, Port & Spirits, Dec 11 Fine Art & Antiques, Dec 12 Reeman Dansie No. 8 Wyncolls Road, Severalls Business Park, Colchester, CO4 9HU 01206 754754 www.reemandansie.com Homes and Interiors (online) Dec 11 Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers, Cambridge Road, Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, CM24 8GE 01279 817778 www.sworder.co.uk

70 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

Fine Interiors (including Silver) Two-Day Sale (live online), Dec 8-9 The London Auction (live online), Dec 15 Homes and Interiors (live online), Dec 16 Homes and Interiors, Jan 5, 19 Design, Jan 26 Jewellery, Jan 27 Modern British & 20th Century Art (timed online, Jan 15-21 T.W. Gaze, Diss Auction Rooms, Roydon Road, Diss, Norfolk, IP22 4LN, 01379 650306 www.twgaze.com The Toy Sale, Dec 10 Christmas Gifts, Dec 10 Antiques & Interiors, Dec 11, 18 SOUTH WEST: Inc. Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Wiltshire British Bespoke Auctions The Old Boys School, Gretton Rd, Winchcombe, Cheltenham, GL54 5EE, 01242 603005 www.bespokeauctions.co.uk Antiques, Dec 9, Jan 27 Chorley’s, Prinknash Abbey Park, Gloucestershire, GL4 8EU 01452 344499 www.chorleys.com Fine Art & Antiques, Silver & Jewellery, Books, Jan 19 David Lay Auctions Penzance Auction House Alverton, Penzance, Cornwall 01736 361414 www.davidlay.co.uk Household Sale, Dec 15 Dawsons, Kings Grove Estate, Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 4DP 01628 944100 www.dawsonsauctions.co.uk The December Sale/ Fine Art & Antiques, Dec 9 Dominic Winter Auctioneers, Mallard House, Broadway Lane, South Cerney, Cirencester, Gloucestershire, GL7 5UQ

01285 860006 www.dominicwinter.co.uk 19th & 20th Century Photography, China, Formosa & Japan, The Jack Webb Collection of Military Images, Dec 16 Military & Aviation History, Medals & Militaria, Sir Barnes Wallis & Sir Winston Churchill, Dec 17 Printed Books, Maps & Documents, Fine Travel & Exploration, Jan 27 Modern Literature, First Editions, Autographs of the Arts, Children’s & Illustrated Books, Jan 28 Dreweatts Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 2JE 01635 553 553 www.dreweatts.com Fine Furniture, Sculpture, Clocks, Carpets, Ceramics and Works of Art, Dec 9 Duke’s, Brewery Square, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1GA 01305 265080 www.dukes-auctions.com Avenue Auction, Dec 8 A Taste of Luxury, Dec 10 East Bristol Auctions, Unit 1, Hanham Business Park, Memorial Road, Hanham, BS15 3JE 0117 967 1000 www.eastbristol.co.uk Entertainment Memorabilia, Dec 11 20th-Century Design and Retro, Dec 30 Gardiner Houlgate, 9 Leafield Way, Corsham, Wiltshire, SN13 9SW 01225 812912 www.gardinerhoulgate.co.uk The Guitar Auction Day 1, incl.

Guitars and Artist Associated Guitars, Dec 9 The Guitar Auction, incl. the Bernie Marsden Collection, Entertainment Memorabilia, Guitar Amps & Effects, Dec 10 Musical Instruments, Dec 11 HRD Auction Rooms Ltd

The Auction Rooms, Quay Lane Brading, Isle of Wight PO36 0AT 01983 402222 www.hdrauctionrooms.co.uk Antique & Modern, Dec 15 Lawrences Auctioneers Ltd. Crewkerne, Somerset, TA18 8AB, 01460 703041 www.lawrences.co.uk Silver & Vertu, Jan 26 Jewellery, 19th/20th Century Design & Ceramics, Jan 28 Pictures, Furniture, Clocks & Rugs, Jan 29 Mallams Oxford, Bocardo House, St Michael’s St, Oxford.

01865 241358 www.mallams.co.uk The Oxford Library Sale, Jan 20 Mallams Cheltenham, 26 Grosvenor St, Cheltenham.

Gloucestershire, 01242 235 712 www.mallams.co.uk None listed at the time of going to press Mallams Abingdon, Dunmore Court, Wootten Road, Abingdon, OX13 6BH 01235 462840 www.mallams.co.uk The Collectors’ Sale, Dec 7 Philip Serrell, Barnards Green Rd, Malvern, Worcs.

WR14 3LW, 01684 892314 www.serrell.com Antique and Fine Art, Dec 9 Stroud Auctions, Bath Rd Trading Estate, Bath Rd, Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 3QF 01453 873 800 www.stroudauctions.co.uk Jewellery, Silver, Bijouterie, Watches, Clocks, Coins, Fine Wines & Spirits, Guns, Weapons, Medals, Militaria, Sporting, Taxidermy, Toys, Classic Cars, Motorbikes & Transport, Dec 7, 8, 9 Books, Ephemera, Stamps, Asian & Tribal Art, Pictures & Paintings, Musical Instruments, Vinyl Records & Toys, Jan 6, 7

The Pedestal, The Dairy, Stonor Park, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, RG9 6HF, 01491 522733 www.thepedestal.com None listed Wessex Auction Rooms Westbrook Farm, Draycot Cerne Chippenham, Wiltshire, SN15 5LH, 01249 720888 www.wessexauctionrooms.co.uk Jewellery, Silver, Watches & Collectables, Dec 11 Antiques, Collectables & Furniture, Dec 12, 13, Jan 23, 24 Vinyl Records & Music Memorabilia, Jan 15 Woolley & Wallis, 51-61 Castle Street, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP1 3SU, 01722 424500 www.woolleyandwallis.co.uk Modern British & 20th Century Art, Dec 9 British Art Pottery, Dec 16 Furniture, Works of Art & Clocks, Jan 13 Silver & Objects of Vertu, Jan 26 Jewellery, Jan 28 EAST MIDLANDS: Inc. Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Sheffield Batemans, Ryhall Rd, Stamford, Lincolnshire, PE9 1XF 01780 766 466 www.batemans.com None listed Gildings Auctioneers, The Mill, Great Bowden Road, Market Harborough, LE16 7DE 01858 410414, www.gildings.co.uk Antiques and Collectors, Dec 15 Golding Young & Mawer The Bourne Auction Rooms, Spalding Road, Bourne, Lincolnshire, PE10 9LE 01778 422686 www.goldingyoung.com None listed Golding Young & Mawer The Grantham Auction Rooms, Old Wharf Road, Grantham, Lincolnshire, NG31 7AA 01476 565118 www.goldingyoung.com Grantham Collective Sale, Dec 9-10

Golding Young & Mawer The Lincoln Auction Rooms, Thos.

Mawer House Station Road, North Hykeham, Lincoln, LN6 3QY 01522 524984 www.goldingyoung.com Lincoln Collective, Dec 16-17 WEST MIDLANDS: Inc. Birmingham, Coventry, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Bigwood Auctioneers, Stratford-Upon-Avon Warwickshire, CV37 7AW 01789 269415 www.bigwoodauctioneers.com Furnishings, Interiors and Collectables, Dec 11, Jan 8, Jan 15, Antiques and Collectables, Jan 29 Cuttlestones Ltd, Wolverhampton Auction Rooms, No 1 Clarence Street, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, WV1 4JL, 01902 421985 www.cuttlestones.co.uk Antiques and Interiors, Dec 16 Cuttlestones Ltd, Pinfold Lane Penkridge Staffordshire ST19 5AP, 01785 714905 www.cuttlestones.co.uk Antiques and Interiors, Dec 9, 23 Fellows, Augusta House, 19 Augusta Street, Hockley, Birmingham, B18 6JA 0121 212 2131 www.fellows.co.uk Watches (timed), Dec 8 Watches & Watch Accessories (online), Dec 8 Jewellery (online timed), Dec 17 Pawnbrokers Jewellery & Watches, Dec 17 Fieldings, Mill Race Lane, Stourbridge, DY8 1JN 01384 444140 www.fieldingsauctioneers.co.uk The December Sale including Jewellery and Silver, Dec 10-11 The January Sale, Jan 14-15 Halls, Bowmen Way, Battlefield, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, SY4 3DR 01743 450700 www.hallsgb.com/fine-art The Christmas Auction, Dec 9 Antiques and Interiors, Jan 13 Hansons, Bishton Hall, Wolseley Bridge, Stafford, ST18 0XN,

0208 9797954 www.hansonsauctioneers.co.uk Curated Christmas Ceramics & Glass Auction, Dec 9 Christmas Fine Arts and Library Auction, Dec 10-11 Kingham & Orme, 01386 244224 www.kinghamandorme.com Davies Road, Evesham, Worcestershire, WR11 1YZ. Fine and Decorative Arts, Dec 4-5 Mellors & Kirk, The Auction House, Gregory Street, Nottingham NG7 2NL, 0115 9790000 www.mellorsandkirk.com Fine Art Antiques & Collectors, Dec 9, 10 Potteries Auctions, Unit 4A, Aspect Court, Silverdale Newcastle, ST5 6SS, 01782 638100 www.potteriesauctions.com 20th Century British Pottery, Antique & Quality Furniture, Dec 12, Jan 8,9 Trevanion & Dean, The Joyce Building, Station Rd, Whitchurch, Shropshire, SY13 1RD, 01928 800202 www.trevanionanddean.com Fine Art and Antiques, Dec 5-7 NORTH: Inc. Cheshire, Co. Durham, Cumbria, Humberside, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, Sheffield, Yorkshire Adam Partridge, Withyfold Drive, Macclesfield, Cheshire, 01625 431788 www.adampartridge.co.uk Two-Day Auction of Furniture & Interiors with Wines & Spirits, Dec 15-16 Two Day Auction of Sporting & Militaria with Furniture & Interiors, Jan 14-15

The Wine & Whisky Auction, Dec 7 Winter Country House & Fine Interiors Auction, Dec 7, 8 Town & County Auction, Dec 16 The Collectors’ Auction, Dec 17 The Stamps & Coins Auction, Dec 17, 18 Town and Country, Jan 13 Capes Dunn The Auction Galleries, 40 Station Road, Heaton Mersey, SK4 3QT, 0161 2731911 www.capesdunn.com Interiors, Vintage & Modern Effects, Dec 14 The Christmas Auction, Dec 15 David Duggleby Auctioneers Vine Street Salerooms Scarborough, North Yorkshire, YO11 1XN, 01723 507111 www.daviddugleby.com Jewellery, Watches and Silver, Dec 10, Jan 7 Decorative Antiques and Collectors, Jan 8 Affordable Art, Jan 9 Furniture and Interiors, Jan 9 Country Pursuits, Sporting Guns, Taxidermy and Militaria, Jan 15 David Duggleby Auctioneers The Saleroom, York Auction Centre, Murton, York, YO19 5GF 01904 393300 www.daviddugleby.com Jewellery, Watches and Silver, Dec 10, Jan 21 Antiques, Fine Art and Collectors, Dec 11, Jan 22 Furniture, Clocks and Interiors, Dec 11, Jan 22 Elstob & Elstob, Ripon Business Park, Charter Road, Ripon, North Yorkshire, HG4 1AJ , 01677 333003 www.elstobandelstob.co.uk Jewellery, Silver and Watches, Jan 16

Adam Partridge, The Liverpool Saleroom, 18 Jordan Street, Liverpool, L1 OBP, 01625 431788 www.adampartridge.co.uk None listed

Hansons, Heage Lane, Etwall, Derbyshire, DE65 6LS 01283 733988 www.hansonsauctioneers.co.uk General Antiques and Collectors Christmas Auction, Dec 15

Anderson and Garland Crispin Court, Newbiggin Lane, Westerhope, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE5 1BF0191 4321911 www.andersonandgarland.com Fine Watches, Dec 7 Fine Silver & Jewellery Auction, Dec 7

Peter Wilson Fine Art Victoria Gallery, Market St, Nantwich, Cheshire. 01270 623878 www.peterwilson.co.uk Fine Jewellery and Watches, Dec 10 Jewellery and Watches (timed online, Dec 10-17 ANTIQUE COLLECTING 71

AUCTION Calendar Because this list is compiled in advance, alterations or cancellations to the auctions listed can occur and it is not possible to notify readers of the changes.

We strongly advise anyone wishing to attend an auction especially if they have to travel any distance, to telephone the organiser to confirm the details given.

Sheffield Auction Gallery, Windsor Road, Heeley, Sheffield, S8 8UB, 0114 2816161 www.sheffieldauctiongallery.com Silver and Jewellery, Dec 10, Jan 14, Jan 26 Diecast Models, Dec 10 Antiques and Collectables, Dec 11, Jan 15, Jan 29 Model Railway, Jan 6 Vinyl Records & Music Ephemera Auction, Jan 14 Specialist Collectable Coins & Stamps Auction, Jan 28 Tennants Auctioneers, Leyburn, North Yorkshire, 01969 623780 www.tennants.co.uk Toys, Models, Sporting & Fishing, Dec 9 Antiques & Interiors (Part II) including Taxidermy, Dec 12 Antiques & Interiors (Part I) including Jewellery, Dec 12 Fine Wine & Whisky, Dec 12 Militaria & Ethnographica, Dec 16 Country House, Jan 9

Jewellery, Watches & Silver, Jan 9 The Historical Collection of Natural History & Taxidermy from Hodnet Hall, Jan 15 Antiques & Interiors, Jan 16, 29 Thomson Roddick and Medcalf, Coleridge House, Shaddongate, Carlisle, Cumbria, CA2 5TU 01228 5289939 www.thomsonroddick.com The Property Of The Late Myrtle Matthews Of Harker, Dec 8 Antiquarian and Collectable Books, Dec 10 Collectors, Dec 9 Vintage LPs, Vinyl & Music, Dec 16 Home Furnishings and Interiors, Jan 5, 19 Collectors, Jan 13 Vectis Auctions Ltd, Fleck Way, Thornaby, Stockton on Tees, TS17 9JZ, www.vectis.co.uk 01642 750616 Specialist, Dec 9, 10, Jan 22 Model Trains, Dec 11, Jan 15

General Toys, Dec 15, Jan 19 Dolls and Teddy Bears, Jan 14 TV & Specialist, Jan 21 The Spiers Collection of Matchbox Models of Yesteryear, Jan 28 Matchbox, Jan 29 Wilkinson’s Auctioneers, The Old Salesroom, 28 Netherhall Road, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, DN1 2PW, 01302 814 884 www.wilkinsons-auctioneers. co.uk Period Oak, Country Furniture and Effects, Dec 13 SCOTLAND Bonhams, Queen St, Edinburgh, 0131 225 2266 www.bonhams.com Whisky, Dec 9 Great Western Auctions 1291 Dumbarton Road, Whiteinch, Glasgow G14 9UY, 0141 954 1500

NEXT AUCTION:

Works of Art, Antiquities Dec. 7, 2020

ONLINE ONLY AUCTION

www.hermann-historica.com Hermann Historica GmbH ❘ Bretonischer Ring 3 ❘ 85630 Grasbrunn / Munich

72 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

HermHist_AntiqueColl_1/4p_4c_O86.indd 1

19.11.20 11:28

greatwesternauctions.com Furniture and Interiors, Dec 9 Two-Day Antiques and Collectables, Dec 11-12 Lyon & Turnbull, Broughton Pl., Edinburgh, 0131 5578844 www.lyonandturnbull.com Contemporary & Post-War Art, Jan 20 Prints & Multiples, Jan 20 The Ski Sale, Jan 20 WALES Anthemion Auctions, 15 Norwich Road, Cardiff, Wales, CF23 9AB, 029 2047 2444 www.anthemionauction.com General Sale, Dec 9 Peter Francis, Towyside Salerooms, Carmarthen, SA31 1JN, 01267 233456 www.peterfrancis.co.uk Antiques, Furishings & Collectors, Dec 9

LENNOX CATO ANTIQUES & WORKS OF ART EST: 1978

•WANTED•

for epic East Yorkshire Georgian townhouse restoration.

Signed and unusual furniture. Georgian, Regency, William IV. Sofa / Pembroke / side tables, library furniture / bookcases. Also Victorian campaign chests, armchairs etc.

Ross of Dublin, Morgan & Sanders, Williams & Gibton, James Winter, Hill & Millard and many others.

J Alderman. Daws and George Minter reclining chairs. Shoolbred/ Hamptons / Cornelius Smith Victorian armchairs.

Marble fire surrounds. Georgian / Regency/ William IV. Bullseyes etc.

Exceptional Georgian / Regency fire grates Sash windows x 4 identical. Georgian reclaimed. Approx 58” high x 36” wide.

Wide reclaimed floorboards. Approx 100 m2.

Early decorative oil / gas / electric light fittings. Ceiling, wall or table.

Early gasoliers. Colza lamps. Gimble lamp.

1 The Square, Church Street, Edenbridge, Kent TN8 5BD 01732 865 988 cato@lennoxcato.com

www.lennoxcato.com

Roland Ward, Van Ingen taxidermy. Human skull. Hippopotamus skull.

Stuffed crocodile / alligator.

Quirky architectural features. Regency columns, corbels, marble and stone pieces, over door pediments, folding/rolling multi part Georgian room dividing doors.

Victorian canopy shower bath. Decorated toilets etc Unitas, Simplicitas, Deluge etc.

Decorated basins x 3.

vintagejewellery@yahoo.co.uk or tel 07958 333442

•WANTED•

VINTAGE WRISTWATCHES Omega Seamasters and pre-1980s Omegas in general.

IWC and Jaeger LeCoultres, all styles. Looking for Reversos. American market filled and 14k pieces possibly, at the right price.

Breitling Top Times, Datoras and 806 Navitimers.

Pre-1960s Rolex models, with a focus in pre-war tanks, tonneaus etc.

Gold or silver/steel. Also World War I Rolex 13 lignes etc. Princes.

Longines, Tudors and Zeniths, pre-1970. Even basic steel models in nice condition.

All the quirky oddities like Harwoods, Autorists, Wig Wag, Rolls etc, and World War I hunter and semi-hunter wristwatches.

Early, pre-war ladies’ watches also wanted by Rolex, Jaeger LeCoultre etc. Prefer 1920s/30s deco styles, but early doughnuts also considered.

PM Antiques & Collectables are a modern and innovative antiques retailer based in Surrey.

Specialising in a wide array of collector’s items, including contemporary art, entertainment and memorabilia, vintage toys, decorative ceramics, watches and automobilia.

We Buy & Sell pm-antiques.co.uk Contact us: phil@pm-antiques.co.uk 01932 640113

Yorkshire based, but often in London and can easily collect nationwide.

vintagejewellery@yahoo.co.uk or tel 07958 333442

PMAntiques2015

PM_Antiques

ANTIQUE COLLECTING 73

LAST WORD Marc Allum

Marc My Words

T

The Ghost of Christmas Present may not offer much this year, but there is still plenty to be thankful for, writes Marc Allum

his year’s festivities will be different. When I think about how past Christmases were spent in the antiques trade, my reminiscences take me back to those early days in the auction business, some 30 years ago, where it was traditional to design an annual Christmas card, host a Christmas view with sherry and mince pies, and exchange bottles and chocolates with buyers and sellers. There are some that might argue that this was a culture of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ but I genuinely feel that it wasn’t. Well, at least not in my case. The idea of spreading Christmas cheer among people who had become friends, or being presented with a

bottle of wine in grateful acknowledgement for the service or expertise given – when an object salvaged from a rubbish dump turned into a several thousand pound sale – seemed reasonable enough.

Granted, the business went round as a result of it, but it was never about seeking a reward, it was about being human.

MORALE BOOSTER This Christmas will likely be devoid of office parties and large festive gatherings.

The annual bash at which the bosses let down their hair and pick up the tab is often regarded as a morale booster after a year of hard work and relentless deadlines. With the knowledge that the last auction has

‘Personally, I would avoid offering mulled wine, as it doesn’t go well with French polish and Persian carpets. But the relationship with clients and the community is important so, if you can’t host that special evening, don’t skimp on the Christmas window - people really do appreciate it when you make the effort’ 74 ANTIQUE COLLECTING

been catalogued and put to bed ready for the New Year, it’s a chance to relax a little.

Certainly, this year has been tough.

Turnovers have in many cases been greatly affected, belts have been tightened and more than ever, beleaguered and insecure employees need a little bit of festive cheer to lift their spirits.

It’s the same for retail. Shops and antique centres around the country which have largely been entirely closed this year, will find it difficult to host their annual Christmas shopping evening that is as much a convivial public relations exercise as a dedicated selling event. Personally, I would avoid offering mulled wine, as it doesn’t go well with French polish and Persian carpets. But the relationship with clients and the community is important so, if you can’t host that special evening, don’t skimp on the Christmas window – people really do appreciate it when you make the effort.

Of course, we are all hoping that the rules around Covid will be relaxed enough for us to spend time with our families and friends but as the year draws to a close I can only wish and hope that 2021 will bring new inspiration and impetus to our business. Next year will also bring increased challenges as we deal with a new world order. Foreign trade may well be more difficult as we leave the EU. Yes, we have suffered and lost work, and, yes, we have had to adapt but the art and antiques industry has always shown itself to be versatile and flexible, so on a positive note I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Marc Allum is a specialist on Antiques Roadshow as well as an author and lecturer, for more details go to www.marcallum.com

Above left The Ghost of Christmas Present may bring chilly times, image Shutterstock Below Prepare for a socially-distanced get together

this year, image Shutterstock

Suffolk House Antiques High Street, Yoxford, Suffolk IP17 3EP Tel: 01728 668122 e-mail: as@suffolk-house-antiques.co.uk Website: www.suffolk-house-antiques.co.uk Mobile: 07860 521583

CHRISTMAS SELLING EXHIBITION 2020

Saturday 5th December – Saturday 19th December

The exhibition will include about 80 examples of early furniture and works of art, with the accent being on colour and patination. Most of these can be viewed on the Christmas Selling Exhibition 2020 online catalogue on my website. I am hopeful that I will be able to have my shop open and ask visitors to please wear masks and maintain social distancing.

For further information please contact Andrew Singleton by telephone or email.

A late Georgian comb back armchair and a 17th century primitive pedestal table.

A Charles II fruitwood and oak chest of drawers.

A Charles II oak dresser base.

A ten seater mid-18th century oak drop leaf table.

Suffolk House 1.indd 1

24/11/2020 09:19