Welcome to Holloway's, the provincial auction house with a difference.

 

 

We show here some of the highlights from recent sales.

You can also view and search our catalogues going back to 2007.

 

 

 

ANTIQUES AND FINE ART, including the collection of the film producer Hercules Bellville: Tuesday 5 March 2013

Our first sale for 2013 of Antiques and Fine Art, held on Tuesday 5 March 2013, was a resounding success and attracted buyers wordwide. The sale included the collection of the film producer Hercules Bellville which included works by Lichtenstein, Erró and Dine. High prices were achieved in the sale with the highest - £28,000 – for Erró’s 'American Interior No. 1', oil on canvas, illustrated below.

Click here for an introduction to his section of the sale. 

Erró (Gudmundur Gudmundsson, Icelandic, b. 1932)
'American Interior No. 1'
oil on canvas, signed and inscribed 'Erro '68 Paris' verso
unframed, 97 x 130.5 cm (38 1/4 x 51 1/2 in)
Estimate: £8,000-12,000
SOLD FOR: £28,000

For a full list of the sales results, click here

CERAMICS AND GLASS : Tuesday 27 March 2012

This sale was notable for the 80-lot section which comprised an important single-owner collection of early Staffordshire and other provincial pottery figures.  All but one of those lots sold, for a total some 50% higher than their upper estimate.  James Lees, who had catalogued the collection and who was on the rostrum for its sale, said he had never seen such frenetic activity on the internet, let alone in the room.  Whilst Staffordshire may not be not as popular as it once was, there is clearly still demand for unusual or rare pieces and there is no doubt that Holloway's policy of selling pieces individually rather than in large lots made the whole sale more attractive to both trade and private buyers.

The highest price - £2,000 - was achieved by an 18th century Whieldon-type manganese-glazed figure of a parrot (lot 156), while a set of four early 19th century pearlware figures emblematic of the seasons (lot 177) made £1,900.

In the glass section, 18th century wine glasses sold consistently well, while the highest price, of £1,600, was achieved by a George III magnum ale decanter.  Overall, the 349 lots took more than £72,000.

 

JULIAN HARTNOLL - artmonger : Tuesday 21 February 2012

Click here for a report on the sale and a catalogue with results.

 

The highlight of our sale of Antiques and Fine Art on 27 September was a small Meiji period cloisonne enamel urn by the Japanese maker Namikawa Yasuyuki (1845-1927). Its maker and thus its importance were unknown to its owner, but not to our specialist James Lees.  His expert catalogue description and our internet marketing meant we had several Japanese bidders competing for it.  Conservatively estimated at £2,000 to £3,000, it sold for £14,000

The sale included a strong silver section of just over 100 lots, of which about one third came from the estate of Sir George Beaumont.  The highlight was a George IV silver tureen by William Eley II, which sold for £7,000 against an estimate of £3,000 to £4,000.

Finally, the furniture section turned up one surprise, when a pair of 19th century mahogany open arm chairs - one of which had had a modern sprung seat inserted - made £3,200 against an estimate of £200 to £300.  It seems likely that their price was driven by their colonial origins.

Our sale of European Ceramics and Glass on Tuesday, 11 October saw particularly strong prices in the glass section, with the Saxon goblet and cover making £1,000 and the large mid-18th century bucket-bowled glass £3,000.  Our next specialist sale in this area wll be held in the Spring.

 

Our sale of Pictures, Books and Ephemera on 28 June produced some surprises, some solid results and some disappointments.

The surprises were in the ephemera section, where an album of coloured photographs of Constantinople sold for £1,200, while two lots of six and three postcard albums made £1,000 and £800 respectively. 

In the watercolour section, three works by Albert Foweraker made a total of £1,560, but perhaps more pleasing was the return to some form of the traditional English watercolour.  While an Oxford view by the eponymous William Turner made just over £4,000 and examples by Thomas Rowlandson made £2,000 and £1,500, a  work by Edward Lear - depicting Pantokrator Monastery on Greece's Mount Athos, where females of all species are forbidden to tread - made £3,600, despite being both unsigned and quite badly foxed.  This  was particularly gratifying as its owner had no idea who it was by, let alone its potential value, when he brought it in with a small collection of 18th century engravings.  Lear's hand is pretty well unmistakeable and his idiosyncratic way of inscribing colour and other notes really left no room for doubt.  We thought it was likely to clean well and the buyer and underbidders obviously thought so too.

                                                                           

An oil on canvas view of a Venetian canal by Angelo Brombo - bought by the vendor's parents while on holiday in the late 1950s - brought £1,600.  If we needed a reminder of the perils of taking pictures at face value this was it - at first sight it seemed a typical and rather formulaic production aimed at the tourist trade (which is exactly what it was); the signature with its overlapping letters wasn't easy to read, but once we'd deciphered it and been able to look the artist up we realised that it was certainly going to achieve a four-figure price.

The disappointments were in the portraits, where the portrait of the Scottish soldier of fortune Sir John Hepburn (c. 1598-1636) sold only on its low estimate of £7,000.  On this occasion, the striking subject and the intrigue as to what might lie beneath the heavy overpainting perhaps led us to expect too much; the reality was that its condition simply put most potential buyers off.  Nevertheless, it did at least sell and as its conservation is being undertaken locally we expect to be able to see it again and - the new owner willing - we will try to show it on our blog once it has been cleaned.