Rocketing into 2025 – Spring Fine Sale

19th March 2025

At the start of 2025 the market remained fairly quiet, perhaps from a collective hangover after the merriment of the festive period or perhaps simply more stagnation of the housing market (and therefore its contents) with the constant changes to interest rates and sale taxes from consecutive governments.  With this and two weeks of snowstorms, ten days from our closing date, we worried for the few lots we had collected for the auction.  However as if the world woke up with the snow thaw, calls came one after another, the tread on my tyres wore thin from house calls and the emails never stopped pouring in.  Within a week the sale was bursting at the seams with a huge array of lots in all sections, with our valuing teams pulling out all the stops to get the sale together in time.

The sale started with a wonderful selection of ceramics and glass and although the Chinese lots sold brilliantly as ever, for a change the headline acts came from the British and European producers. Early on in the section an illustrious pair of Crown Derby vases painted by Albert Gregory made £1,200, a large Dutch Delft 17^th century vase brought a brilliant £2,100 and a striking Royal Worcester pot pourri painted with flying swans made its top estimate at £2,400. Beyond these traditional offerings the 20^th century designers also had their say, when a group of Clarice Cliff fantasque bizarre pottery made £1,100 and a delicately designed small vase by the brilliant Dame Lucie Rie stormed past its top estimate to gain a hammer price of £6,800 with bids from the room, internet and phones.

For some time now I have been talking about the rise in bullion prices and its impact on the silver market, not to sound like a broken record, this has not changed as investment in and the value of silver and gold has continued to increase over the last quarter.  Due to this, many of our lots within the silver section sold beyond expectation and the number of unsold items remained extremely low. This is not to say that items are only worth their “scrap value”, as with age, collectability and quality of the items there is much more to see here than merely a weight of silver. The best three lots of the section were seen with a very stylish part tea service designed by Georg Jensen that reached £1,500, a beautifully ornate four-piece service from 1906 by Elkington that made £1,650 and a very grand five-piece service by the same maker that made a whopping £1,850.

This trend continued into our vast offering of watches and jewellery, seeing fifteen items achieve four figure sums.  My favourites of the section were seen with a very well presented five stone diamond ring that made £1,850, a gentleman’s solitaire diamond ring that reached £2,300, a 9ct gold cigarette case by Kurt Weiss that reached £3,600 and an eye catching diamond solitaire ring of 3cts that made £8,000.

Our Spring Fine Sale always contains an offering of Arms, Militaria & Field Sports items, with everything from Fijian clubs to American rifles, and fine shotguns to stuffed fish. This sale was no different with 120 lots that, after the dust settled at the end of the section, was only left with one single lot unsold – a cracking result for any auctioneer!  Within the section we saw an interesting Third Reich clock, liberated from a German U-boat make £750, a model 1881 Russian Cavalry sabre make £800, and a cased collection of British regimental badges and silver medallions make £1,400. But the most interesting item within the section and certainly the biggest talking point during our view was a Victorian stuffed dog that reached above the estimate to make £1,350; a dog so loved by their owner that it was cased to remembered for ever more.

Our usual offering of Works of Art started with a surprising section of iconic music ephemera, with a multitude of books and framed special edition Beatles records. The best of these came with a copy of “I Me Mine” signed by George Harrison that made £1,400, next a run of R.I.A.A. certified gold presentation discs presented to officials such as The Beatles themselves, sold with prices spanning from £1,000 to £1,800, with the two best reaching £2,600 each. There was a brief break from The Beatles with the book MOONAGE DAYDREAM signed by David Bowie that made just shy of £1,000, before we moved into the more classical works of art with a box of Mughal school paintings gaining £4,200 and a remarkable Louis Vuitton trunk filled with its original encyclopaedia Britannicas (for the really posh chap or chapess setting off to boarding school) made a belting £5,400. 

From here we moved amongst the prints and paintings on offer, starting with two big names with local legend David Hockney and his signed print of Salts Mill Saltaire that saw £1,100, and a signed print by Pablo Picasso “La Magie Quotidienne” that rocketed past the estimate to see £1,850. Often watercolours in this day and age are a hard sell, but I was very pleased to see £1,100 for a wonderful garden scene by Lionel Percy Smythe RA RWS, and within the Yorkshire oils we saw good results with a harvest scene by Herbert Royle making £1,100 and a healthy £3,600 for a wonderfully melancholic mill scene from Peter Brook.  However the best of the section came from two consecutive lots by Leon Bakst, both pictures highly stylised mixed medias with the first of a costume design that made £1,150, but another showing a programme design depicting the world-famous ballerina Nijinsky soared to an impressive £9,500.

The sale ended with heavy change of gear into the clocks and furniture, starting with a large section of 1960s and 1970s Danish inspired furniture, so favoured by the current market; the best of the retro came from a teak Troeds dining table and six very stylish chairs that made £1,650. The best of the traditional lots came from a solid Army & Navy campaign chest that made £800 and a beautiful quality Georgian serpentine mahogany chest of drawers that reached the top of its estimate at £1,350.

The sale was a huge success and marked the start of our charge into 2025, now the ball is rolling we wait with bated breath for our Toy Sale on April 5^th and are already busy readying our lots for the Fine Sale in June that comes each year with a specialist Garden & Architectural section for all our green fingered clients.