Setting sale: this Somerscales painting proved to be one of the highlights of the Catherine Southon auction at Farleigh last week
A stainless steel Rolex GMT Master Pepsi automatic calendar bracelet wristwatch with dual time zone, along with its original receipt from 1970 and its service history, was sold for £22,320 by Catherine Southon Auctioneers and Valuers last week, in her first auction of the year at Farleigh Golf Club in Selsdon.
Star buy: the £22,000 Rolex
The watch had a pre-sale estimate of £8,000 to £10,000, but was bought by trade buyer after fierce competition between telephone, room and internet bidders.
In the same family since first purchased more than 50 years ago, the watch had been discovered by TV antiques expert Southon during a valuation day held at the golf club last year.
The second-highest price achieved at the auction was for an Egyptian sandstone relief fragment of a goddess that sold for £11,160 to a UK buyer against an estimate of £800. Also from the same estate was an intriguing 4,000-year-old Egyptian wooden headrest from the 6th Dynasty (2360-2195BC) and fetched £7,440.
Elsewhere in the sale; a George III mahogany serpentine fronted chest of drawers that sold for £5,580 to a UK buyer and was part of another estate in the sale, while a large diamond-set floral clip brooch by Boucheron, circa 1940 within its original box, fetched £5,208.
Searle owner: someone acquired an original by one of the 20th Century’s foremost satirists for nearly £4,000
Two of the highest prices among the paintings was an oil on canvas titled “Three-masted vessel on open seas” by Yorkshire-born artist Thomas Jacques Somerscales (1842-1927) that sold to an international buyer for £3,968. The painting had been discovered at a valuation day in Chislehurst.
And an original illustration by celebrated cartoonist Ronald Searle, the creator of St Trinian’s School and illustrator of the Molesworth books, and called “Coughs cannot always be totally suppressed”, from a local private collector, sold for £3,968.
“We were delighted with our first sale of the year which showed strong results across all categories,” Southon, a regular on BBC television’s Celebrity Antiques Road Trip, said.
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