Shrewsbury's landmark Art Deco house collection makes more than £15k at auction
A collection of sculpture, posters, paintings, ceramics, lighting and collectibles used to decorate Shrewsbury’s famous 1930s Art Deco house sold for more than £15,000 on Wednesday.
Two thirds of the collection, which ran to 85 lots, found buyers at Halls Fine Art’s Modern and Contemporary Art and Design auction at the Battlefield saleroom in Shrewsbury, which attracted buyers from the America and Europe.
Top sellers were sculptures of dancing females by Austrian sculptor Jozeph Lorenzl (1892-1950) which sold for up to £1,500.
Other leading prices from the Art Deco collection were £420 each for a pair of tall candelabras and photo frames, a group of lights and light fittings and £320 for a chrome standard lamp with frosted glass shades.
“The vendor used to own the Art Deco house in Copthorne, Shrewsbury and decided to decorate and furnish it in Art Deco style,” explained Alexander Clement, Halls Fine Art’s senior valuer.
“The house has become quite a landmark in the town.
“When we originally assessed the collection, which has been in storage, we arrived at a value of around £15,000, so we are very happy with the overall result.
“There are plenty of collectors out there for modern and contemporary art and design and we sell to an international audience - we had bids from Europe and the United States in this sale. We are now seeking further collections for our forthcoming sales.”
Top selling auction lot was Damien Hirst’s acrylic on paper, ‘Butterfly Spin, which sold or £1,900.
Other top prices were £1,300 for ‘Autumn Oak’ by British artist Fred Cuming (1930-2022), £1,150 for an oil painting of Port Isaac harbour in Cornwall by Rowland Fisher (British, 1885-1969) and £900 for ‘Sunset, Barga, Tuscany’ by Carlo Rossi (1921-2010).
Welsh artist Aneurin M. Jones (1930-2017) is developing a following at Halls Fine Art.
Two of his acrylic/oil paintings titled ‘Farmers and Welsh Cob’ and ‘Welsh Farmers at a Stock Sale’ sold for £1,250 and £900, respectively, to continue a run of successful results in Shrewsbury.
A signed woodcut titled ‘Green Flower’ by Ken Kiff (1935-2001) sold for £700, ‘Daffodils in a vase’ by French artist Francis Tailleux (1913-1981) made £650 and ‘Long Arm of the Law’, a 1989 oil by Dan Mieduch (b.1947) and ‘String Quartet’, an oil by Dorothy Bradford (1918-2008), sold for £600 apiece.
Other leading prices were £550 each for ‘Breakfast Conversation’, an oil by John Yardley (b.1933) and ‘Portrait of a Black Woman’ for a 1953 oil by Muriel Smith (1903-1993) made £500 for ‘On the Grand Canal’, an oil by Richard Price (1962-2018).
Highlights of the modern and contemporary design section were a vintage Louis Vuitton keepall luggage bag at £400, an Art Deco walnut cocktail cabinet at £360 and a ‘Homelands Lazy Table’ by Philip Hearsey (b.1946) at £260.
