AUCTION Sales round up

Chiswick Auctions, London A Victorian horseracing trophy, known as ‘Her Majesty’s vase,’ found after 177 years, sold for double its estimate at the west London auctioneer’s recent sale.

The vase, which fetched £40,000 against a pre-sale estimate of half that, was last seen in 1845 when it was presented by Queen Victoria to the owner of the winning horse at the Plymouth, Devon and Cornwall races.

The family of its recipient Sir John Barker-Mill, 1st Baronet (1803-1860) had little idea of its significance after the vase and stand had become separated from each other. They were recently reunited after the stand was

The stand was found in an outbuilding while the vase was used as a wine cooler found in an outbuilding.

The vase was made by the silversmith John Samuel Hunt (1785-

1865)

Lyon & Turnbull, Edinburgh Four scent bottles by René Lalique (1860–1945) were among the star lots at the Scottish auctioneer’s recent sale dedicated to the French glassmaker.

Each perfume bottle from the quartet exceeded their guide price

The Bouchon Cassis bottle, designed in 1920, has a stopper formed of cascading bunches of currants in four different colours, each having a low pre-sale estimate of £2,000. They sold for sums of between £5,250 for the orange bottle to record sums of £18,750 each for bottles in clear blue and black.

Lalique started designing perfume bottles for the perfumier François Coty, his neighbour on the Place Vendôme in Paris, who believed success in the fragrance business lay in beautiful packaging and an affordable price.

A similar bottle Bouchon Mûres (Blackberry stopper), also in black and clear glass and deemed even rarer, sold for £27,500.

Wilkinson’s, Doncaster A 17th-century oak court cupboard sold for £88,000, shattering its estimate of £6,000-£8,000 at the South Yorkshire auctioneer’s recent sale. The piece is finely carved with a frieze of arabesque strap-work. A pair of figural pilasters is central to the cupboard, or buffet, one carved as Atlante a character from the epic 16th-century Italian poem Orlando Furioso; the other a bare-breasted caryatid wearing a ruff collar.

The intricately carved 17thcentury cupboard sold for £88,000

Laidlaw Auctioneers, Carlisle The ‘lost’ blueprint for the world’s first tank sold for £14,600 at the Cumbrian auction house’s recent sale.

The plans for the Mark I tank, which came from a private vendor whose family had owned them for many years, were secured for the nation by the Tank Museum in Dorset.

The blueprint is dated May 1916, just four months before the Mark I tanks’ first outing during the Battle of FlersCourcelette, part of the Somme Offensive in WWI.

Paul Laidlaw with the blueprint purchased for the Tank Museum

Bellmans, Billingshurst One of the most famous sofas in film history belonging to Uncle Monty in the cult film Withnail & I sold for £15,000 at the West Sussex auction house, smashing its low estimate of £4,000.

Uncle Monty’s Chelsea house in the 1987 black comedy, starring Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann, was the real-life home of Professor Bernard Nevill. The equally recognisable tapestry from the film, expected to make £2,000-£4,000, sold for £13,000 to a private bidder.

The tapestry from the film flew past its pre-sale guide price, fetching

£13,000

The sofa is known to millions of fans of the cult film Withnail & I

14 ANTIQUE COLLECTING