Antiques & Fine Art - Post Auction Report February
On Tuesday 25th February, Fellows & Sons held their ever growing auction of Antiques & Fine Art.
The day began with one of our best ever openings; a rare collection of twenty-one paperweights, including Baccarat and Clichy examples, ensuring plenty of excitement and a packed saleroom. The collection totalled almost £10,000, with top prices of £1,600 for a Clichy spaced millefiori weight with blue ’barber’s pole’ decoration, closely followed by £1,500 for a Baccarat example with typical silhouette canes.
The ceramics and pottery section is always popular at Fellows, and this time included highlights such as a good Winchcombe pottery cider flagon by Michael Cardew, which sold for £600, and a rare Doulton Lambeth stoneware mouse by George Tinworth which sold for £460 despite damage to its ears. In the Oriental ceramics section, a good large pair of Japanese Satsuma vases made a double-estimate £980.
The auction also featured a fantastic pen section, in which many limited edition Mont Blanc and Cartier examples drew huge amounts of attention, causing most lots to achieve hammer prices well above the estimates. Mont Blanc highlights included a Mont Blanc Prince Regent at £780, an Octavian at £800 and a Hemingway at £740.
A new and different audience was also attracted by a good collection of Leica digital cameras, lenses and accessories, all lots selling for a combined total of £7,980 including £3,000 for a Noctilux lens alone.
A strong Art Nouveau and pewter section featured a photograph frame attributed to Tudric (Liberty & Co.) which sold for £1,500. Soon followed by another one of our cover lots; a fine Japanese Meiji period bronze figure of Benkei, the legendary strongman, for which the bidding platforms lit-up and telephone, online and saleroom bidders went against each other, driving the hammer price up to a staggering £6,200.
The paintings began well with an impressive modern section. A print of Marilyn Monroe at Reno Casino by Eve Arnold was the star attraction, expected to sell well but surpassed expectations and reached a hammer price of £1,700. Of the more traditional paintings the highlight came from ‘Lake of Maggiore’, by James Baker Pyne, RBA, for which a bidding war ended in a sale of £2,900.
The most astounding hammer prices of the day came from four lots of L’Epee carriage clocks, taking everybody by surprise when the bidding continued over £1,000. The day ended with the furniture section, including a selection of garden furniture led by two large cast iron ‘City of London’ street bins which sold for £420. A 19th century red tortoiseshell mirror/picture frame sold overseas at £700, , and a 19th century Italian marble-topped carved limewood torchere finished the auction in style, selling for double-estimate £660.