Boom or Bust
12 Mar, 2009
This year's
second Furniture and Works of Art sale at Woolley and Wallis has
continued to reassure provincial auction houses that the recession
has yet to hit them as hard as the London salerooms. With both this
sale and the January sale totalling around the quarter of a million
mark, there is little to show that buyers are shying away from
investing in art and antiques.
The star lot on
Tuesday 10th March was two carved marble portrait busts
whose Roman ancestry overrode their relatively extensive damage and
restoration. Consigned by a private vendor, local to the saleroom,
the busts were underbid by a private collector on the telephone,
but eventually knocked down for £25,000 to Galerie Chenel, a French
dealer who had flown over from Paris to bid in the room.
There were similar successes in the Clocks and Barometers
sale the following day, where a late George III mahogany longcase
clock by London maker Vuilliamy sold for £40,000 against an
estimate of £10,000 - 15,000. There was huge interest in the clock
prior to the sale, with twelve telephone lines booked. However,
many of these didn't get a look in as the bidding took off between
the ultimately successful telephone bidder and a determined but
disappointed underbidder in the room. The vendor had bought the
clock in the early 1980s for £4,300; the tenfold increase proving
the purchase to have been a very worthwhile investment.