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Only a handful of war-related items have surfaced at John Williams’s auction in Alexandria on April 24 and 25 - notably a Royal Doulton porcelain figure of an Australian World War I light horseman by Charles Noke, estimate $2000 plus.
It’s raining radios out there in auction land. No sooner had Melbourne’s Leonard Joel cleared out a major local collection including a very rare 1930s Spartan Nocturne that brought $48,000 but Sydney’s Lawsons is putting under the hammer several hundred radios from the lifetime collection of a couple who ran a bric-a-brac shop in Albion Park, south of Sydney.
After 25 years at his two-storey gallery premises on the corner of Paddington Street and Cascade Street, in Sydney’s Paddington, eminent specialist dealer in prints, posters and photographs Josef Lebovic is moving to Kensington. His new gallery, at 103A Anzac Parade, is a Georgian-style former bank dating from 1914 designed by the renowned William Hardy Wilson.
The big UK-based auctioneer Bonhams has shrugged off the abrupt termination of its partnership with Sydney-based auctioneer Tim Goodman at the end of last year, and is opening new premises in Sydney under the name Bonhams Australia. A permanent staff of 15 will be headed up by James Hendy of the former Bonhams & Goodman partnership
Furniture, art and curio hunters who like to cast a wide net might want to check out the offerings this week at Vickers and Hoad’s new Maitland auction rooms, a spin off from their main rooms in Anzac Parade, Kensington.
Christian McCann has finally achieved his lifelong dream – owning his own auction house, just like his father Ron and grandfather Clifford before him.
Grace Antique Galleries is one of the last of a prominent generation of dealerships within the “Golden Mile” of the antique industry – High Street, Armadale.
A touch of the old Southern Cross Hotel in Exhibition Street, Melbourne will be evident at Philips Auctions sale from noon on Sunday April 11 at 47 Glenferrie Road, Malvern, when items from the Jade Gallery (part owned by the late Lewis Noble) go under the hammer.
Mail from the famous Hindenburg Zeppelin – that tragically exploded in flames on landing on May 6, 1937 killing all on board – will be part of Leski Auctions stamps, coins and postal history sale from 5pm on Wednesday at 13 Cato Street, Hawthorn.
It seems the sparks were flying on Sunday March 21 when Leonard Joel hammered a one-owner Melbourne collection of vintage radios. With around 200 people in the saleroom, including a visiting US dealer, and bids raining in from as far afield as Germany, the UK and New Zealand, the 219 lots raised a buoyant $390,000 on the hammer - a healthy $100,000 above the lower presale estimates.
Guy Cairnduff of Melbourne auctioneer Leonard Joel was a weary man on the weekend of March 20-21. As the firm’s head of decorative arts he has been cataloguing a large one-owner sale that will take place in Macedon, Victoria, on March 28
Sculpture and artifacts from ancient India and Persia, tribal art from Aboriginal Australia, Papua New Guinea and Borneo, ritual objects from Tibet and Southeast Asia - that’s a fairly typical line-up at Guy Earl-Smith’s tribal and antiquities auctions in Sydney‘s Double Bay.
Several off beat items will be the order of the day at Young’s first antique auction for 2010, which kicks off at 9.30am on Friday March 19 at 229 Camberwell Road, Camberwell Junction. Auctioneer David Young said an AMI Continental 2 jukebox (Lot 653) from the 1960s was just one of the more unusual items to attract buyers along with seven cartoon cels (Lot 673 onwards) featuring such popular characters as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Jungle Boy and the Lion King.
There’s all the tricks of the trade for wine lovers coming up at Mossgreen’s “Interior Decorator” sale in Melbourne‘s South Yarra on March 21 and 22, which features the contents of the heritage listed Bona Vista - the magnificent property once occupied by the prominent colonial medical figure and naturalist Edmund Hobson.
The staff at John Williams salerooms in Sydney’s Alexandria couldn’t believe the spectacular prices paid for a brace of Aussie-related ceramics offered on behalf fo the Australian Fund at the firm’s recent sale. A Royal Doulton vase painted with the lovely heath fuchsia, epacris longiflora, apparently a pair to one in the Powerhouse collection, brought a buoyant $4000 plus premium.
Red and yellow and pink and green . . .remember the kindergarten song "I Can Sing a Rainbow"? Melbourne auctioneer Leonard Joel has rounded up a cavalcade of rainbow-hued radios which it will offer on Sunday, March 21, and there are plenty of eye-catching examples to brighten any vintage radio collector's day or lend sparkle to an otherwise bland lounge-room.
Everyone in the auction world loves a “sleeper” - an item tagged with a modest estimate that astonishes everyone by selling for a motza. Many such items are from the exotic East - and everyone knows valuing oriental wares is an arcane art.