Online Auction Success for Ceramics & Pictures 16 Jun 2020 News

Bishop & Miller has held its first two online only auctions since the pandemic enforced the government to temporarily shut the doors of the popular Suffolk auctioneers. With the government allowing doors to re-open and businesses to continue trading, the auction calendar for the remainder of 2020 continues to offer a robust and exciting schedule of auctions for all taste buds! The new schedule sees four auctions taking place in June and four in July offering auctions such as Jewellery, Silver, Toys, Military, Pictures and Music to name just but a few!! 

The first up was a Mr Bishop Ceramics auction, building on the success of its January Ceramics auction, this auction saw another 327 lots of beautiful ceramics from Royal Worcester figurines such as lot 243 a Royal Worcester figurine, from the ‘Graceful Arts’ series, ‘Painting’ which reached a hammer price of £430 (including buyers premium) to lot 159 a late 19th century Hadley’s Worcester porcelain bell vase, decorated with foliage and grapes on a cream and pink ground which attracted a £410 hammer price (including buyers premium). Another star piece of this auction was lot 134, a Royal Worcester figurine from the ‘Graceful Arts’ series, Music. This exceptional piece of ceramic fetched an auction price of £310 (including buyers premium). For our first auction back after the lockdown, it was a fantastic start.

It was great to be able to get back to what we do best and be on the rostrum. Oliver Miller said, “It was so good to be back, it was surprising how much I missed being up there taking an auction. The results was fantastic, we have worked hard to build our online customer base and as we ship to buyers all over the world and also those local to us, there is no shortage of buyers for our auctions.”. He went onto say: “we had such a high selling rate for our ceramics auction with over 90% sold through online bidding and also our commission bidding platforms.”

The second online auction that took place within the same week was a Mr Bishop Picture auction. This auction was the first dedicated picture auction of 2020 and saw an interesting collection of pictures on show. As per the ceramics auction, there were a number of highly successful lots featured in this auction. Such as lot 44 a Ralph Brown (1928-2013), “Girl in a Blue Dress”, signed pencil and wash, dated 1985, with hand written title label, Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 1987 label and tag verso, housed in a hessian and gilt frame. This beautiful pencil and wash picture fetched £720 (including buyers premium). There were so many lots that excelled their auction estimate, another that did just that was lot 90 a William George Ager (20th Century) oil on canvas entitled ‘The Fire Service, A Tribute’. This piece was signed and measured 39cm x 49cm framed, Entered for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 1991 labels verso. This lot reached £340 (including buyers premium)

Oliver said of both auctions: “it was great to see some fierce bidding online. We have had a very successful start to our auctions again, with prices achieved and selling rate both extremely high. We have a really busy second half of the year for auctions, with over 25 more auctions from August to December as part of our schedule. I’m excited that there are so many different auctions included in our calendar. We are proud to announce some new and exciting auctions such as The Collector – Fine & Early Works of Art & Furniture and Rural, Domestic & Industrial Bygones, it’s going to be an exciting rest of 2020!”

Bishop & Miller have two more auctions for June still to come, the Mr Bishop Collectables (26 June) and Mr Bishop Jewellery & Silver (23 June) and both are available to view online. Bidding for both these auctions will remain through commission bids and online bidding through the-saleroom.com.

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