Auction House Directory
Bonhams - Knowle

Auction Categories

Antiques, Fine Art, Memorabilia & Collectibles auctions, Specialist auctions, Government Auctions UK 

Auction House Details
Opening Hours:
Monday - Friday
9:00-17:00
Saturday
9:30-12:30

Bonham’s saleroom in Knowle is housed in a 16th Century converted farmhouse of some considerable character, located at the heart of England, ten minutes from Birmingham International Airport and Railway Station.

We hold regular sales of Silver and Plated wares, Ceramics, Glass and Oriental wares, Decorative Arts, Antique Maps, Paintings, Furniture and Works of Art, with an additional programme of specialist sales unique to this saleroom.

Silver
Our four sales of Silver and Plated Wares each year include a wide variety of antique and modern domestic and collectable silver, with a good range of 18th, 19th and 20th Century hollow wares, including tea and coffee services, claret jugs, and sauce boats, as well as candelabra, candlesticks, canteens of cutlery and flatwares to interest private and trade buyers. The novelty and collectable section of the sale regularly includes snuff boxes, vinaigrettes, caddy spoons, vesta cases and other writing, smoking and dressing accessories, either as individual lots or part of larger private collections. A late Victorian ewer and beaker, enamelled with scenes of Warwickshire, made by Elkington and Company and assayed in Birmingham in 1890, recently sold for £16,600.

Ceramics and Glass
We hold quarterly sales of antique Ceramics and Glass, our Midlands location being ideally situated to offer pottery, porcelain and glass from the well-known manufacturing regions of Staffordshire, Worcester and Stourbridge. The sales typically feature a range of predominantly 19th Century and earlier pieces including 18th Century wine glasses, Stourbridge and Bohemian cameo glass, majolica and Staffordshire pottery, porcelain from the Coalport, Minton, Royal Worcester and Royal Crown Derby factories and continental productions including 19th Century Meissen, together with ceramics and works of art from China and Japan. The department's recent successes include a fine pair of late 19th Century Bohemian ruby overlay glass comports sold in May 2005 for £3200, and an unusual Minton majolica box modelled with a frog, which sold in March 2004 for £3600.

Chess
In Knowle we hold biannual sales of chess related items, as part of the works of art, furniture and pictures sales. These are national sales, benefitting from the support of Bonhams' international network of offices and salerooms.

Decorative Arts
In conjunction with our May and November sales of Ceramics and Glass are two sales of Decorative Arts, which include Furniture, Metalwares, Ceramics, Glass, Silver and Jewellery selected from the post 1860 period to the present day. These sales feature pieces from the Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods, and also more contemporary pieces from the Modernist era. The ceramics and glass categories offer a selection of pieces by makers such as Lalique, Whitefriars, Galle, Ruskin, Moorcroft, Clarice Cliff, Troika, Doulton amongst others, with recent high prices achieved for two Minton Art Pottery aesthetic period chargers, £5,200, a Ruskin high-fired bottle vase, £1,950, and a Goldscheider Art Deco figure of a lady, £2,000. In Metalwares, a pair of Liberty & Co. pewter candelabra designed by Archibald Knox recently realised £3000, and a pair of photograph frames by the same designer, £3100.

Over the last few years the Knowle saleroom has been responsible for developing sales devoted to Arts and Crafts jewellery. We have successfully sold examples by Liberty & Co., Murrle Bennett, Omar Ramsden, Charles Horner, Dorrie Nossiter, Sibyl Dunlop and Georg Jensen, as well as important Birmingham jewellers such as George Hunt, Bernard Cuzner, Bernard Instone and Arthur and Georgie Gaskin. In May 2005 the highlight of the 106 lots offered included a rare aquamarine, diamond and platinum pendant by Archibald Knox that sold for £7,200.

In addition, annually in the November sale, a section is devoted to the firm Gordon Russell and its furniture production from the 1920s, and Cotswold School cabinetmakers of the same period, recently recording £900 for a Gordon Russell walnut dressing mirror, £2300 for a similar cabinet and £2200 for a walnut stationery box attributed to Ernest Gimson.

Please note, this category of sale is also on view during the Sunday prior to each sale, 10am to 2pm.

Furniture, Paintings and Works of Art
The saleroom holds five specialist sales of Paintings, Furniture & Works of Art during a year, offering around 400 lots in each sale, including Prints, Miniatures, Watercolours, Oils, Boxes, Metalwares, Novelty & Unusual Objects, Sculpture, Light & Heart Fittings, Scientific Instruments, Clocks & Barometers, Rugs & Carpets, Garden Statuary, Ornaments & Related Furniture, Mirrors, and Furniture of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries. Estimates range from around £100 to £10,000.

The saleroom is proud to have been instructed to recently sell amongst other house contents, The Contents of The Dower House, Oaken, Wolverhampton including a George IV Gillows rosewood and brass inlaid side cabinet, which sold for £25,000, and in the same sale from another private vendor, an Edgar Hunt oil painting of a Mallard, Ducks and Ducklings for £13,500.

In addition, these sales twice yearly include a section of 16th to 19th Century Maps, and in different sales twice yearly include works by ‘Snaffles’ (see specialist section).

Please note, this category of sale is also on view during the Sunday prior to each sale, 10am to 2pm.

Prints and other works by 'Snaffles' - Charlie Johnson Payne The Knowle saleroom began selling ‘Snaffles’ prints in February 2001, and by the second sale in November 2001 we achieved what we believe to be a world record price for a print by this artist - a copy of “An Irish Point-to-Point”, which sold for £6,900. The sales have gone from strength to strength, held twice a year at Knowle, however, we have yet to break our own record! Other successes include the sale of a private collection of greetings cards that totalled just under £7000 for 25 lots. We have also been entrusted with the sale of at least three private collections of prints, which each represented a lifetime’s collecting. Strangely, original works by ‘Snaffles’ are not as keenly sought after as the printed work, however, they are nonetheless saleable and we have to date recorded prices from £500 through to £5000.

‘Snaffles’ was born in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire in 1887, and is heralded as one of the 20th Century's finest sporting artists. His printed work is usually, but not always, signed in pencil, and is easily recognised by the quirky titles such as “The Finest View in Europe”, “I would bring such fishes back”, “The Informers”, “Anzac”, “The D.R.”, “Landing His Wager”, “The Varmint Little Lady”, “Blighty”, “Bang Tails”, “Bob Tails”, “Major Junks”, “Pip Hornby”, “The Springer”, “The Right Man on the Wrong ‘Oss”, “The Huntsman”, “A Little Fizzer”, “Handing it out to ‘em”. He also wrote and illustrated a number of books, recording his travels in Africa and Asia, his hunting and military experiences - My Sketchbook in the Shiny, Red Letter Days, ‘Osses and Obstacles, More Bandobast, Mixed Bagmen, A Half Century of Memories, Four Legged Friends and Acquaintances, and I’ve heard the Revelly.

Sales including works by 'Snaffles' are held at Knowle twice a year, usually in April and November, and past catalogues and sales results are available from the saleroom on request.

Textiles
Bonhams group specialist Textiles and Costume sales are held four times a year at Knowle and include needle lace, bobbin lace and machine made lace, lace making bobbins and accessories, whitework, linen, fans and parasols, oriental costume and accessories, religious costume and accessories, period costume and accessories, shawls, quilts and coverlets, general textiles and needlework.

We recently sold an exquisite 17th Century stumpwork panel entitled 'The Judgement of Paris' for £3600, a mid-19th Century chain stitch woolwork sailor's rug for £5,800, a 1928 'Reville Terry' lady’s court presentation dress for £420, a rare late 16th/early 17th Century pair of square tabbed gauntlets for £3100, a delicately worked mixed Brussels application square shawl and matching overskirt at £1300, a good early 19th Century Chinese export fan for £1250, and a Chinese formal court robe (chi fu) of royal blue silk at £640.

The department is also able to give advice on 20th Century designer fashion, accessories and furnishing fabrics, for the Vision 21 sale held in March and October at our Knightsbridge saleroom.

Sewing Tools & Related Items
The Sewing sale, held annually in December, is now in its twelfth year and demonstrates how a speciality can be developed into a world market leader. Now linked with our December Textiles sale, it attracts buyers worldwide and is an avidly awaited event. The sale comprises

Reference books and ephemera
Tape measures
Pincushions, including silver figurals, pin retainers and emeries
Waxers
Reels, reel boxes, stands and cotton barrels
Shuttles
Silk winders and wool balls
Knitting, wool winders and swifts
Sewing clamps
Needlecases, boxes and books
Scissors and cases
Chatelaines
Thimbles and cases
Bodkins and cases
Stilettos, tambour hooks and crochet hooks
Works boxes, etuis and companions

The Knowle saleroom retains the world record price for a thimble - in 1989 we sold an Elizabethan 'Persia' work example for £17,500. December 2004 saw the introduction of an additional “Button” section to the sale. This comprised the collections of the late Stan and Mary Godsell, the former collected military buttons, the latter dress buttons, and the sale total for their combined collections was £36,000.

Toys
We hold two specialist sales of toys and dolls per year, one of which is dedicated to the huge variety of toys produced by the Meccano Factory. These include Dinky Toys, Hornby Dublo, Hornby 0-gauge and Meccano sets from 1901-1980. The other sale is a general sale including Corgi, Matchbox, diecast, trains, tin and novelty toys. We also source for the Fine Toys and Dolls sale held in November at our Knightsbridge saleroom which includes early tin toys, the best of trains from 00/HO to large gauges of the pre-war era, early biscuit tins, diecast, live steam models, and money banks.

Mechanical Music
Mechanical Music and Domestic Apparatus are sold along with radios, cameras and railwayana, the two sales being held in Spring and Autumn. The sale encompasses all mechanical music from the 18th Century up to the 1940s, including cylinder and disc musical boxes, gramophones and phonographs, organettes, player pianos and enchanting singing bird boxes. Domestic apparatus comprises early sewing machines, typewriters and telephones. The Spring sale also includes amusement machines, comprising one-arm bandits, fairground art and Wurlitzer and other jukeboxes.

Cameras, Magic Lanterns, Stereo Views and Optical Toys
We hold two regular sales in a year, and this year on October 25th we are proud to be selling the Paul Tobias Photographic collection as a special one-owner sale. This collection, from Malibu California, includes many early and rare cameras and magic lanterns, including Daguerreotype cameras and equipment used by an American travelling photographer in the 1850s-1860s. Recent regular sales have included a stereo camera by Andrew Ross c.1855 at £8600, a Frith's Cosmoscope print viewer at £1550 and twenty mid-19th Century glass diapositive slides at £1150.

Radios
Bonhams Radio and Television sales are held twice yearly in the Spring and Autumn. Radios fall significantly into two bands of collectors, the 1920s and the 1930s. The former is highly sought after, especially early crystal and valve sets, found often in cabinet form; headphones and speakers were optional accessories. Prices achieved at Knowle are often into the high hundreds with some rare Marconi examples commanding over £1000. The 1930s saw the birth of the Bakelite and walnut cabinet examples due to mass production and affordability to the general public. The distinctive circular and arched Art Deco designs made by the firms Ekco, Ferranti and Philco are highly prized.

In May 2004 Bonhams Knowle sold the collection of David Costello from Buckinghamshire comprising over 300 radios, with 100% sold and totalling over £26,000.

There are a few televisions that command high prices in a highly selective market. In the main these are pre-war models, often in cabinet form combined with radio and gramophone, some post war examples are desirable, namely the Bush variant models, also due to their distinctive Art Deco appeal.

Railwayana
We hold two sales per year including locomotive name/number plates, whistles, gauges and other hardware, totems and other station and trackside signage, railway posters and other associated ephemera. We currently hold the world record for a single railway ticket of £2,700 for a Chester & Holyhead Railway Parliamentary single from Britannia Bridge to Bangor c1855, sold October 2001.

Firemarks & Insurance Related Items
The Knowle saleroom includes firemarks and insurance related items in its Collectors Items sales, held in Spring and Autumn each year. Firemarks are highly collectable, and we hold the British Auction Record of £8,600 for a London Assurance fire mark.

The initial requirement to provide compensation for loss and damage to property by fire came after the Great Fire in 1666, which devastated one third of London and reduced to ruins 13,000 houses and 89 churches, including St. Paul’s. Underwriting fire insurance began in about 1680, and as very few streets were named and the buildings were not numbered, it was deemed that some form of identification was necessary, hence the birth of the firemark. The first examples were made of lead, and 100 years later copper, tinned iron, zinc, brass and ceramic were used. The marks carried the logo of the insurance company and in many cases the coat of arms for the city, Greek mythology was also used in many designs. These marks were attached to buildings by the insurance company to indicate that the building was insured for fire risks, and this practice continued for 250 years. During this time there were approximately 200 insurance companies who issued over nine hundred firemarks, some unique, some with as many as forty variants.

Police & Fire Service Memorabilia
A recent addition to our Collectors Items sales.
The main emphasis in the Police section is Truncheons, the most collectable are extensively decorated and of particular interest are truncheons with individual village or town names, or those for ‘hundreds’, the old method of dividing the county into boundaries. Also truncheons bearing owners’ names, and the most sought after of all, railway truncheons. Other police items will only be of interest if pre WWII, and more likely pre WWI - badges, helmets, uniforms and handcuffs.

The pre WWII rule also applies to fire service items. Helmets range in prices from £100 to £1000 depending on the material of manufacture and decoration. Anything pre-war in terms of uniform is likely to be of interest to collectors, anything from pre-1920s is now quite scarce and very collectable.

County
The saleroom holds sixteen County sales a year. Each sale has a good selection of affordable Antique and Later Furniture, Ceramics, Glass, Silver, Pictures and Curios. Estimates range from approximately £40 to £1,000.

Whilst the specialist valuation team are primarily involved in appraising items for auction sale, we also undertake valuations for Probate, Family Division and Insurance purposes and have experts who can advise on Tax and Heritage matters.

For advice on buying and selling at auction or for further information about our valuation and auction services, please telephone the saleroom or email knowle@bonhams.com

To find us:
Bonhams Knowle is within minutes of Junction 5 of the M42, north of Warwickshire and south of Birmingham.
 

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