Buckinghamshire

A 1940s Rolex wristwatch whose RAF owner was murdered by the SS after the Great Escape has sold for £165,000 in Buckinghamshire.

This 14½ x 12in (37 x 30in) portrait which will be offered at Dickins Auctioneers in Middle Claydon, Buckingham, on March 1-2 has been dated to c.1513 after the auctioneers carried out an X-ray test on the oak panel.

Graduates of Buckingham University’s Furniture Conservation, Restoration and Decorative Arts courses can now turn to their tutors for work.

THERE can be few more instantly recognisable forms in English furniture than the Windsor chair. Since the early 1970s, Michael Harding-Hill has been well known as an authority on the subject, publishing ‘Windsor Chairs, An Illustrated Celebration’, a book which pictures many examples that passed through his hands over many decades as a dealer.

PRESERVING the Past, Protecting the Future, Collecting and Conserving Fine and Decorative Arts, is a new fine arts conference scheduled for September 14-16 at Buckinghamshire New University in High Wycombe.

LEADING art market analyst Dr Clare McAndrew had to address delegates by loudspeaker phone at the annual LAPADA conference, held at Waddesdon Manor on April 21.

“Our product is sustainable, re-usable and re-saleable. We must all work to make people aware that antiques are green.” So says Beaconsfield dealer Nigel Worboys, who this week launches a campaign to change the public perception. Click Here to register your vote on the Antiques are Green logo.

A set of 38 individual original metal printing plates used for the illustrations for John Lennon’s first book, are to go under the hammer on December 2 at Dickins of Middle Claydon, Bucks.

When Buckingham auctioneer John Dickins sold an ebony mantel clock by the pioneering British designer C.F.A. Voysey in September 2004 for £72,000 (see ATG No 1658, October 2, 2004) he was naturally delighted. These highly desirable icons of arts and crafts horology are very scarce (only half a dozen in aluminium, oak or painted oak had been recorded at that point) so a new addition to the canon was noteworthy.

A remarkable array of art and antiques seized by the High Court from an Austrian businessman convicted of fraud were sold by a small-scale Buckinghamshire auctioneer last week.

RIGHT: he had initially catalogued it as by Archibald Knox, but it was not until Buckinghamshire auctioneer John Dickins removed its cover shortly before the sale that he realised what a rarity he was really offering in this 19in (48cm) high Arts and Crafts mantel clock.

A LOCAL estate provided the Thames Valley firm Bourne End Auction Rooms (12% buyer’s premium) with some fine lots for sale on August 4.

PERIOD if possible, but, above all, practical – this seems to be the current code among furniture buyers in the experience of Amersham Auction Rooms (15% buyer's premium) over the past couple of years.

AN airheaded and insubstantial vice it might be, but plainly vanity has lasting appeal at auction, judging by the success of the coromandel veneered lady’s box, top right, and the gentleman’s hide toilet case, bottom right, offered at Amersham Auctions Rooms (15% buyer's premium) on June 6.

SOME 100 lots of silver and plate at Amersham Auction Rooms' (15% buyer's premium) April 1 400-lot sale largely bore out the current perception of the market that wine-related items will sell in an otherwise moribund market.

Despite the important nature of many items being sold to militaria and weapons specialists at the Marlow rooms of Bosleys (15% buyer's premium) on March 10, there were, as usual, a number of more domestic objects included.

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE organisers Midas Fairs are relaunching their long-standing two-day Spring Bank Holiday fair at The Bellhouse Hotel in Beaconsfield next month. The previously popular partially standfitted event returns on May 30 and 31 after a year off, due to what Joy Alder of Midas describes as “circumstances beyond the organiser’s control”.

THE gulf in value between fully authenticated pictures and those with mere attributions was clearly in evidence on March 4 when this 18th century Irish School landscape, right, came up for sale at the Amersham Auction Rooms in Buckinghamshire.

BUCKINGHAM-based Dickins Auctioneers have pulled a major rabbit out of the hat for their inaugural Spring picture sale on April 17 by including a previously unseen collection of 24 Erté (1892-1990) gouache theatrical costume designs which will include this one, right, for Showgirls.

The highlight of the sale conducted by Bourne End Auction Rooms (12% buyer’s premium) near Marlow, Buckinghamshire, on March 4 was this pair of tin-glazed earthenware plates, right, made c.1740 by Saverio Grue at the Castelli factory in Naples.