Auction Highlights: From the Late Dowager Lady St. Oswald


February 2024

 

The sale of furnishings and collectables from the home of the late Dowager Baroness St. Oswald, one time mistress of Nostell Priory, attracted a huge amount of interest and bidding from around the world. The sale totals were more than double the top pre-sale predictions.

            Over a hundred lots of period furniture, silverware, rare china and collectables from the North Yorkshire dower home, where Lady St. Oswald was living in retirement until her death at the age of 94 last year, went under the hammer in two auctions at our Duggleby Stephenson York saleroom last week.
 
Lady St. Oswald had a great love of the Georgian period, the 18th and early 19th centuries, and that was evident not only in the furniture and furnishings in the house but in her collections too, particularly the porcelain.
 
The seventy-six lots of St. Oswald porcelain, ceramics, silverware, collectables and books in Thursday’s Antiques & Collectors auction included fifteen lots of Meissen, half of them 18th century, and 25 lots of fine Chinese porcelain, quite a few of which also dated back to that period.
 
We saw phenomenal levels of interest from Germany and China, with fierce bidding that saw just about every lot exceeding top estimate, in some cases by pretty jaw-dropping margins. A buyer from China paid £1,000 for a porcelain charger of the Kangxi period (1661-1722) that was expected to achieve £200-£300 (pictured).
 
The Meissen collection did just as well, attracting a great deal of interest from Germany, although British collectors gave them a real run for their money and took some of the best lots.

 

 

A set of 13 Meissen ‘Cries of Paris’ modelled by the sculptor Peter Reinicke in the mid-18th century went for £2,200, and three Meissen tea bowls, expected to make £150-£250, went for £1,400 (pictured below).
Fifty-five lots of period and period-style furniture and furnishings from Lady St. Oswald’s home went into our Furniture, Rugs & Interiors Sale on Friday, achieving results that were routinely two or three times top pre-sale predictions - and in some instances as much as five times higher.
 
The tone was set by the very first couple of lots in the auction: two identical armchairs made by the aristocratic favourite Howard & Sons in the Edwardian period. Expected to make £500-£800, the hammer went down on the first at £2,700, whilst the second sold for £3,900 (the bidder wanted the pair - pictured below).

Speaking with the press our Managing Director, William Duggleby said: “The two auctions show once again that interesting things with an interesting history will attract people to the York saleroom – from the region, the country and internationally – and they will do very well when they go under the hammer here.”
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