Cotswold cornucopia
There is something for everyone, from wine lovers to appreciators of fine lace, at CADA, as coffee drinkers find succour at Christie’s
IT is extraordinary what one may learn in the antiques market. When looking at www.moxhams-antiques.co.uk, I found not only the expected stock of the Bradford-upon-avon dealers, but also letting details for the Domaine de Roubignol, its most attractive house in the Lot, France. This was originally a winemaster’s house and a roubignol is a small red grape, which gives its name to the neighbourhood. However, roubignolles, despite being feminine, is an argot term for a very masculine pair of attributes. Whether, like the English equivalent, it can also mean nonsense, I do not know.
I was actually looking for details of a truly splendid toy stable that measures 51½in high on its stand (Fig 1). It is dated 1902 and has shiplap—which I should have known, but didn’t; the word means rabbeted overlapping boards—walls and a glass roof, allowing the owner to see three loose boxes and a tack room within. Furthermore, there is a working wheel and pulley hoist up to the hayloft. Priced at £1,550, it could be a perfect present for a horse-mad daughter. Although there are no horses to scale, Moxhams does offer a 1920s Lines Brothers ‘Sportiboy’ rocking horse at £2,250. This has been sensitively restored, but some of the paint is original, as are the mane and saddle.
These are among the items currently being exhibited by members of the Cotswold Art & Antique Dealers’ Association (CADA) in the run-up to Christmas. Unfortunately for them, CADA’S website is out of date and will not be refurbished until the new year, so anyone searching for exhibitions will have to look up individual galleries and shops.
One of them, Prichard Antiques (www.prichardantiques.co.uk) has a less expensive plaything, at £95, which takes me back to my own childhood. A solitaire board, like this Victorian wooden one (Fig 2), used to occupy us very pleasantly and seldom provoked discord among siblings. The glass marbles here look rather more modern, but, however old or young, glass is much more pleasing to the hand than plastic substitutes.
Indeed, not only for marbles. I wonder what would be the best wine to serve in a green decanter. This conundrum may explain the brevity of the late-18th-century fashion for coloured decanters, but a happy time could be had trying to solve it. Delomosne (www. delomosne.co.uk) of North Wraxall, near Chippenham, has a very attractive pair of emeraldgreen decanters (Fig 3) dating from about 1800. They have pear-shaped stoppers and, an unusual feature, three neck rings (£1,500). The dealer has a wide-ranging stock of drinking glasses and welcomes visitors by appointment.
For many years, the furniture dealer Witney Antiques (www. witneyantiques.com) has enjoyed a well-justified reputation as the place to seek traditional embroideries, such as stump and crewel work, and samplers. At the moment, it offers two very seasonal items, one a darning sampler stitched by MP in 1810 with a green, red and gold holly border (£5,800), the other a mid-17th-century ‘whitework’
sampler stitched with bands of lace snowflakes on white linen, at £3,800 (Fig 5).
As in Nature, each flake is different.
A November sale at Christie’s was titled The Collector, but perhaps Accumulator might have described it best, as all sorts of antiques were packed in and collectors in many fields should have enjoyed themselves. An early Meissen specialist, for instance, might have hoped to secure both 6in-high versions of a Böttger red-stoneware coffee pot designed by Johann Jacob Irminger, Augustus the Strong of Saxony’s court silversmith. One, dating from 1710–11, was elaborately moulded with flowering branches, animals and birds painted in coloured enamels and further embellished with gold foil set with garnets (Fig 4). This shot away from a £30,000 estimate to take £281,250.
However with, to my mind, excellent taste, Augustus put a stop to this, pointing out that the enamelling was more costly
than the ‘crockery’ itself. The other coffee pot, made a year or so later, had indications that the moulding had been removed and was otherwise polished, but undecorated. This no doubt pleased Augustus, and I would far prefer to own it, especially as it sold for only £34,375.
A collector of pre-civil War English silver would certainly have been interested in a 6½inhigh cup or mug with two ‘ox-eye’ handles (Fig 6), which was dated 1610 with a maker’s mark IA. This makes it the oldest known example of a type that is rare, but was popular with Oxford and Cambridge colleges, so competition from the Ashmolean or Fitzwilliam might have helped to push the price to £165,000.
A mid-18th-century George II Irish mahogany side table estimated to £50,000 had been offered at Christie’s in 2009, when the estimate was a little higher. Now, it sold for £85,938, in line with several comparable tables, including one owned by the late Knight of Glin at £73,250, also offered in 2009.
The shaped apron had a lion’s mask flanked by scrolling foliage and eagles’ heads, giving it an appealingly naïf look of Le Douanier Rousseau.
Next week A marshall’s art