Time to sell with demand for antique furniture
An upturn in the local market for furniture makes it a great time to sell unwanted pieces, according to Surrey auction house Ewbanks as it prepares for its three-day summer sale later this month.
Items of furniture and clocks will be on sale during the third day of the auction, following jewellery on the first day and silver, fine art and antiques on the second.
Key items of furniture include an 18th-century mahogany drum table, estimated at £1,500 to £2,000. The table has a leather-tooled and gilt top, which sits above four drawers – one with an adjustable writing surface – and four faux drawers, on column support to splayed legs and brass lion-paw feet and castors.
There’s also a good collection of clocks already consigned for the last day of the sale. Highlights include a French brass and four glass mantel clock, by Charles Vincent, Paris, valued at between £1,000 and £1,500. It has a two train movement with visible escapement, striking on a bell, and mercury pendulum.
Elsewhere, a late 19th-century French champleve enamel and brass mantel clock with eight day movement, the painted face, with Roman numerals, has a pre-sale guide price of between £500 and £1,000.
The sale also includes such paintings of note as a large signed oil-on-canvas by Scottish artist Alexander Jamieson RA (1873 – 1937) entitled ‘The Aylesbury Valley’. It has been valued at between £800 and £1,200, is signed, titled and dated 1934.
Another oil-on-canvas, this one by British pre-Raphaelite artist Arthur Hughes (1832-1915), entitled ‘Cornish Scene,’ is signed and has been valued at between £500 and £800. London-born Hughes studied at the School of Design, in Somerset House, London, and won a place at the Royal Academy Schools. He produced some of his best-known works during the 1850s, some of which are in the collections of the Tate Gallery, and the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Hughes’ final exhibition at the Royal Academy took place in 1908.
The jewellery auction on the first day of the sale includes an early 20th-century Cartier ladies fob watch, which has been valued at between £2,500 and £3,500. It has a white enamel dial with Arabic numerals surmounted by a minute chapter ring, and Breguet hands, within a wreath and ribbon guilloche bezel.
Alongside this is a Victorian silver swing-handled basket, with pierced and embossed ear of corn decoration, on scrolling oval foot, which has an estimate of between £400 and £600. It was made by the Barnard silversmith family in London, 1845.
The sale takes place from June 20 to 22.