Radish dish sells for £950
Porcelain collections sold for nearly £20,000 as international buyers from as far away as South Korea competed for quality lots on offer at Shropshire’s leading fine art auction house yesterday (Wednesday).
Highlights of Halls Fine Art’s successful British and Continental Ceramics and Glass, Paintings and Prints auction in Shrewsbury were a collection of Vienna porcelain from Warwickshire which sold for £8,500, a Caughley collection from London which sold for £7,530 and a Coalport collection from a Shropshire vendor which totalled £3,690.
Top price in the auction went to a pair of late 19th century Vienna style porcelain baluster vases which tripled their pre-sale estimate to secure £2,200. The 22cms tall vases were painted by Wagner, Berlin with portraits of ‘Sommer’ and ‘Herbst’ and elaborate floral garlands.
The collection also included cabinet plates at up to £600, a tall ovoid vase painted by Wagner with Maidens at Leisure in a garden landscape which sold for £450 and a 20th century BPM Berlin portrait plate in the Vienna style which made £440.
Some of the rare Caughley porcelain pieces, which came home to Shropshire to be sold, were exhibited at the 1999 Caughley Bicentenary Exhibition.
The top selling pieces were a 31cms wide ‘Weir’ pattern radish dish, circa 1785-’95, which tripled its estimate at £950, a gilt and white tea service in the ‘Queen’s Pattern’ at £600, two ‘Thorny Rose’ mugs for £850 and £500 and a milk jug in the ‘Ark’ pattern, circa 1790, at £420.
Leading the Coalport collection prices was a varied collection of teacups, coffee cups and saucers which sold for £420.
“The auction results demonstrate the strong market for rare, early English pottery and porcelain, particularly when in good condition, as well as for the highly decorative wares produced at the likes of Royal Vienna in the latter part of the 19th century,” said Caroline Dennard, Halls Fine Art’s ceramics specialist.
“There was also intense, competitive bidding on Coalport tea and coffee wares from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where bidders in South Korea drove up many prices.”
Other highlights in the ceramic section were £630 for a rare English pearlware mug commemorating the beheading of Louis XVI in 1793, £550 for a 1937 Royal Worcester pot pourri vase and cover painted with fruit by E. Townsend and £440 for a Minton parian figural group of Una and the Lion after a model by John Bell (1812-1895).
In the paintings section, a signed oil by Colin Graeme (1858-1910) of setters hunting a pheasant sold for £900 and a watercolour in good condition by Noel Harry Leaver (1889-1951), titled Jewels of Arabia, made £850.
The section’s other leading prices were £700 for two paintings by a follower of Adolf Schreyer (1828-‘99) of mounted Arab horsemen, £650 for a still life study with a vase, fruit and wine glass by Raymond Campbell (b.1956) and £600 for an oil on board by Irish artist Niccolo d’Ardia Caracciolo (1941-‘89)
