A Decorative Pair of Baroque Style Marriage Portraits, Continental Circa 1900

A very handsome pair of classical bronze busts raised on white alabaster columns decorated with gilt metal rings, atop squared rouge royal marble...

A highly decorative & robust pair of 19th century hand-carved & painted Italian Baroque style pricket / torchère table lamps, previously as candles...

A very attractive & finely executed portrait of a beautiful young woman positioned facing the viewer, her hair worn in high chignon and wearing pearl drop earrings, attired in a whit...

A most unique and highly decorative orientalist inspired tobacco humidor, showing a hexagonal shaped composition body similar to chalk-ware, decorated with match pockets...

An attractive & very comfortable pair of giltwood fauteuils, both frames showing arched crest-rails with upholstered backs, sided by padded armrests ter...

A large and impressive pair of Louis XVI style gilt bronze chenets showing applied lyre shaped elements fronting torchere shaped co...

A wonderful pair of Continental Baroque style carved giltwood panels depicting two different saints, unsigned, each with foliate crests and scrollwork carved giltwood frames, dating ...

A Continental porcelain oval plaque circa 1900 painted with a beauty holding a rose after Nathaniel SICHEL (1843-1907), impressed C above 170, within a ...

Pair Continental Gilt Bronze Roman Reliefs of Charioteers Framed c. 1900 Each with a gilt bronze classical charioteers holding torches and leading a pair of horses. Mounted in per...

Late 19th or early 20th century garden portrait of a lady painted in the period of Art Nouveau. Stylized palms serve as an elegant backdrop for a seated heiress painted in soft paste...

'Sea Garden' panels in plaster by British Master craftsman Geoffrey Preston MBE. The designs for this pair of decorative panels spring from the series of drawings the artist made for the The Goring...

Pair of decorative 'Flower Garden' panels in plaster by British Master craftsman Geoffrey Preston MBE. The designs for these spring from a series of drawings in one of the artist's sketchbooks. The decoration was modelled in clay onto a clay base, using fingers, thumbs and small boxwood tools. The clay base enabled Preston to draw into the background, as well as build up from it, which gives a greater depth and emphasis to the modelling. A silicon mould was made from the completed models, and from this plaster casts can be taken. He uses Herculite No 2 plaster with burlap (hessian) and timber lathes to reinforce. Each pair is cast to order and signed and numbered on the reverse. The 'Flower Garden' panels are original works. Preston's aim is to use the fluid character of clay to make poetry in light and shadow in plaster. There is a strong influence of flowers and plant forms in his work, often in the context of architectural elements. He is conscious of proportion and the language of gesture, which is demonstrated in the flowing nature and harmony evident in his work. Geoffrey Preston MBE is a Master of traditional plaster-relief techniques who draws on eighteenth-century decorative art and sculpture, but combines it with his contemporary eye for design. He cites Giacomo Serpotta of Sicily and Egid Qurin Asam of Bavaria as two of the greatest influences on his work, both of whom stretched the boundaries of what people thought possible to sculpt in plaster during the Late Baroque period. In addition, he admires painter Rex Whistler and wood engravers, Charles Tunnicliffe and Joan Hassall...