Dunhill table lighter lights up saleroom
A sought-after Dunhill ‘Aquarium’ table cigarette lighter lit up a recent auction in a Somerset saleroom when it was bought for an impressive £2,500.
The lighter featured an aquarium scene, skilfully captured on painted lucite panels on the sides.
Elsewhere in the sale of Decorative Arts and Ceramics at Lawrences of Crewkerne, an Arts and Crafts copper dish by the celebrated late-19th and early-20th-century metalworker John Pearson, dated to 1889, fetched £450. A bronze otter cub by the sculptor Laurence Broderick, famous for creating ‘The Bull’ at the Bull Ring in Birmingham, sold for £1,620.
The sale’s other highlights included:
- Sixteen pieces of a Bloor Derby `Named View` dessert service, which included views from Scotland to Middlesex, made £1000
- An 18th-Century onion-shaped sealed wine bottle of olive-coloured glass more than doubled expectations to take £680
- Two distinctive items in the Oriental section included a pair of Chinese `famille verte` rouleau vases, which made £1375; and a Chinese archaistic style bronze vase that was bid to £2250.
