Alfred Reginald Thompson, ‘First Time at The Box,’ £22,100
STANSTED MOUNTFITCHET, U.K. – An oil painting of Britain’s first female prime minister addressing the House of Commons for the first time sold at Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers on October 4 for £22,100. The buyer and underbidder were both based in America, bidding via the telephone.
Swan Mark Registers of Owners, two volumes, both dating to the 16th century, est. £8,000-£16,000
STANSTED MOUNTFITCHET, U.K. – A Tudor manuscript designed to help with swan-keeping in the era when mute swans were owned by the English crown comes to auction in the summer. The two-volume manuscript in Sworders’ August 23 sale of Books and Maps was used from the 16th to the 19th century by landowners in Norfolk and Suffolk. This example, consigned from the estate of Cambridgeshire antiques dealer Peter Croft (1924-2001), is estimated at £8,000-£16,000. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.
A tiny, centuries-old Buddhist bronze figure created in northeastern India sold for £273,000 (about $343,800) on May 13. Image courtesy of Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers
STANSTED MOUNTFICHET, UK – A 900-year-old bronze figure of a Buddhist deity smashed all expectations to bring £273,000 (about US$343,800) during an Asian art sale at Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers on May 13. The diminutive figure of the four-faced, eight-armed goddess Amoghapasa (a name that means wisdom giver) had been consigned from a private source with modest hopes. The Buddha was found in the bottom of a box of miscellaneous metalware by Sworders Asian art specialist Yexue Li. The seller, who was described as “shell-shocked,” has subsequently invited specialists back to their house to look through further items.
Baltic gilt-bronze and cut-glass chandelier, est. £800-£1,200
STANSTED MOUNTFICHET, UK – On April 21, Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers will hold a sale titled Let There be Light – The Christopher Butterworth Collection, featuring 250 lots ranging in price from £250 to £5,000. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.
Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers has appointed James Pickup to the Sworders Board of Directors, effective as of January 1. He joined the auction house in 2015. Image courtesy of Sworders
STANSTED MOUNTFICHET, UK – Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers has appointed James Pickup to the Sworders Board of Directors, effective January 1. Pickup’s appointment brings the total number of board directors up to five.
Photograph of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. with his second wife, Mary Lee, part of a collection of Fairbanks family photographs estimated at £200-£300
STANSTED MOUNTFICHET, UK – Hollywood royalty comes to Sworders this spring. A stand-alone auction on March 2 includes more than 100 lots from the family collection of the legendary American actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (1909-2000). The archive of photographs, cinema posters, personal jewelry, objets of vertu, furniture, paintings and clothing was amassed during Fairbanks’s life as a film star, naval officer, producer and family man. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.
Ed Finnell’s photograph of David Bowie as the Thin White Duke, taken during the 1976 ‘Station to Station’ tour
STANSTED MOUNTFICHET, UK – Original photographs of Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Robert Plant, and Elton John performing will appear for sale at Sworders next month. The Design auction on July 14 includes a cache of prints taken by music photographer Ed Finnell at legendary gigs held in Los Angeles in the 1970s.
Collection of flea circus props and memorabilia from Professor Len Tomlin’s Flea Circus, aka ‘The Smallest Show On Earth’
STANSTED MOUNTFICHET, England – The Out of the Ordinary auction at Sworders on April 13-14 is its largest to date, numbering close to 600 lots. The sale brings together the weird and the wonderful, from an original Dalek from the Doctor Who television series to a sword presented by Catherine the Great to a cossack who helped put down a rebellion to ‘the Smallest Show On Earth’ –the UK’s last surviving flea circus.