A late 18th century Chinese bowl, decorated flowers and foliage in underglaze blue, sold for £18,000 at the Charterhouse October auction. When the vendor was notified of the result, she was absolutely delighted and will put some of the money towards her trip over Christmas when she will be visiting family in Chicago.
“As provincial auctioneers, Chinese ceramics are notoriously difficult to get right as they have copied and reproduced their own wares for literally centuries.” Commented Richard Bromell. “We often throw too much caution to the wind and we were a little late on picking up on the importance of this lot. However, when we did realise that we were looking at a saleroom sleeper, we went straight into overdrive contacting all our London and Hong Kong collectors and dealers. On the day, the bidding ended up between a Chinese dealer against a top London specialist, who had cancelled a good lunch appointment to be at the sale, with the hammer falling to the London specialist.”
Elsewhere in the auction, which saw very few lots unsold, a collection of studio works by the late Barbara Tribe totalled over £15,000, a Pilkingtons Royal Lancastrian vase £2,600, a specimen marble topped table £1,800, a walnut Tallboy £1,500, a Chinese jade scent bottle £1,100, two mahogany linen presses at £1,100 and £1,000, a pair of Doulton Lambeth vases decorated lions and deer by Hannah Barlow £4,400 for the delighted Bournemouth vendor, and an equally delighted owner near Crewkerne of the Wedgwood fairlyland lustre vase at £3,400.
Charterhouse is now accepting entries for their two day November auction of silver, jewellery, watches and antiques, with nearly 300 lots of modern Royal Crown Derby, Worcester and other good ceramics, followed by a two day December sale with trains and railwayana on day one followed by clocks and collectors items. Next up is their first sale of the New Year, with a major collection of Border Fine Arts being combined with their popular Beswick auction in January.
Auction info www.charterhouse-auctions.co.uk
