Arts & Crafts oak from the second and third generation

Mallams (20% buyer’s premium) offered 12 impeccably provenanced pieces by Peter Waals (1870-1937) at Oxford on May 23.

Extracted from Antiques Trade Gazette | Terence Ryle

This oak tall boy with secretaire by Stanley Webb Davies dated 1954 sold for £4500 at Mallams.

Each came with documents showing he had supplied them in the mid-1930s to Mrs Crowther, a daughter of Joseph Goddard, one of the principal patrons of the Cotswolds School craftsmen.

At the time Waals, previously a foreman at the Daneway House workshop of Cotswolds pioneer Ernest Gimson, was working from his own workshop in the nearby Gloucestershire village of Chalford.

Best of the 10 pieces which got away to a total of £16,000 were a 6ft 4in wide (1.93m) walnut dressing table and a 6ft 9in (2.06m) wide oak desk with raised back, two central drawers, flanked by pedestals each with two cupboard doors and three drawers. Each went to the UK trade at mid-estimate sums of £3200.

Representing a substantial amount of quality furniture for the money, a collector bid a low-estimate £3000 for an oak drop-leaf dining table with six dining chairs with original upholstery. As with the other pieces in the sale it was sold complete with a receipt for Mrs Crowther dated 1935.

Webb Davis family collection

Market-fresh work by the next generation of Arts & Crafts craftsmen was offered at Dawson’s (20% buyer’s premium) at Maidenhead on May 25.

Consigned by the family of Stanley Webb Davies (1894-1978) were 26 lots of furniture and ephemera from his Lake District workshop and home.

Working well into the post-war era, Davies was committed throughout his life to the ethos of handicraft.

Top-seller was a 5ft 7in (1.71m) high oak tall boy with secretaire. Signed SWD and by two of the employees, Ernest John Oldcorn and Fred Ellison, and dated 1954. It came, as did all the lots, with associated Davies ephemera, and tripled the top estimate in selling at £4500.

Personal touches to the collection included the oak bracket and bell he made for his home and some tools and drawing implements. Both quadrupled the estimates – the bell, offered with an octagonal bowl, selling at £500 and the tools, with a small oak desk-tidy box, at £450.