William and Mary walnut bureau cabinet – £24,000 at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood.
It’s a rare sale these days at which an English furniture standard challenges quality Chinese pieces for price, but the top end of the trade certainly rated a 6ft 3in (1.9m) William and Mary walnut and featherbanded bureau cabinet offered by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).
Other more pedestrian examples of a textbook form might well have sold at the £4000-6000 estimate. This one, however, offered at the July 10-11 Exeter sale, went to a London dealer trade at £24,500.