AUCTION Round up
BELLMANS, WISBOROUGH GREEN Two chairs, used to watch the investiture of the Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle on July 1, 1969, sold for £1,050 at the West Sussex auction house.
Some 4,600 flat-packed chairs were designed by Lord Snowdon and offered for sale after the ceremony for £12 each. The chairs, which are increasingly collectable, came with their original cardboard shipping box and supporting paperwork. The frame is made from steamed beech and the seat and back of preformed plywood veneered with olive ash.
The Lord Snowdondesigned chairs were sold after the ceremony
The flat-pack chairs seated 4,600 guests at the castle
LYON & TURNBULL, EDINBURGH
Two posters by the Swiss illustrator Martin Peikert
Peikert’s art deco style is a favourite among collectors
(1901-1955) led the field at the Scottish auctioneer’s recent sale of ski posters proving the category shows no signs of going downhill. His 1955 lithograph of the resort Champery sold for £9,375 – against an estimate of £5,000-£7,000, while a 1946 poster of the alpine village of
Gstaad sold for £9,375 – against an estimate of £3,000-£5,000.
Born in 1901 in the Swiss town of Zug, Peikert studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva and worked as an advertising illustrator until he graduated in 1921. By the 1940s he had moved to French-speaking Switzerland, where he created tourism posters for the Valais and Bernese Oberland.
Designs reflecting the joy of skiing sell best
12 ANTIQUE COLLECTING
A Matchbox Superfast 68a Porsche 910 was part of the collection
VECTIS, STOCKTON-ON-TEES A lifetime’s collection of nearly 3,000 Matchbox cars sold for more than £300,000 at the North Yorkshire auctioneers. The Matchbox car collection, comprised of Matchbox 1-75 model cars and trucks, was started by the classic car auctioneer, Simon Hope, founder of H&H Classics, when he was a boy.
He said, “It was only when I got older that I realised there was actually a collecting scene out there providing information on rarer versions and colours.”
Highlights from the sale included the collection’s most expensive item – a lime green ERF dropside lorry that sold for more than £7,000; a green Ford kennel truck that fetched £3,200 and a white Ford Mustang, which made £2,100.
Vectis specialist, Julian Royse, said: “Models from the 1950s which had previously been very valuable are now less so, with later examples now extremely desirable.”
The toys were exported to Eastern Europe sparking a big market in the Czech Republic, he added.
GILDINGS, MARKET HARBOROUGH A 19th-century spear thought to have been made by the Luba in the Democratic Republic of Congo sparked an international bidding war when it flew past its low estimate of £200 at the Leicestershire auctions to make £18,500.
Made for ceremonial use, the spear sold for
£18,500
The 167cm spear, which had been consigned by a local seller on a general valuation day, featured a carved head and steel tip and was designed as a status symbol rather than a weapon to be used in warfare.
The spear may have been crafted by tribespeople in the
Congo
