This week, Norman Watson looks at two international pieces which both failed to reach their potential at auction ...

THE GREAT EXHIBITION in London in 1851 showcased Britain’s manufacturing muscle and attracted six million people – equivalent to a third of the entire UK population at the time.

My two objects this week are intimately connected to the rush of international fairs the Crystal Palace exhibition inspired – yet both came a cropper in recent auctions.

First to an exceptional cabinet of architectural form constructed by the Wedgwood factory and its chief modeller Charles Toft for the 1878 Exposition Universelle in Paris (pictured below).

Finished in contrasting light and dark wood, its central section is profusely decorated with panels and medallions of Wedgwood porcelain showing scenes of angels, mermaids, monks and soldiers.

It is topped by a blue and white porcelain gallery above a glazed arch decorated with a Wedgwood relief of Shakespeare, with portraits of Milton and Chaucer on side niches.

Such complex and extravagant objects usually attract institutional interest. And though it appeared at auction on home ground in Paris on December 18, no one was tempted by its Euros 40,000-60,000 presale guide and it remained unsold.

n MY SECOND item is an important Arts & Crafts oak wardrobe made by Heal’s of London, which won a silver medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1900 and was thereafter taken ‘secondhand’ to the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901.

A complex mix of woods, bow-fronted and inlaid with decorative panels of pewter and ebony, the wardrobe has appeared in various furniture reference books. It has been displayed in the V&A and loaned for the Tottenham Court Road outlet’s anniversary exhibitions of 1960 and 1972.

My copy of the 1901 Glasgow Exhibition catalogue says it was designed by Ambrose Heal Junior – who promoted a simplicity of design “which provides comfort and comeliness, as well as cleanliness” – and was on show at Stand 285 under the heading ‘ A Guest’s Bedroom’.

In a design ‘manifesto’ essay of 1900, Heal had taken an undisguised swipe at Art Nouveau furniture, as “grotesque shapes... violently extravagant in their novelty.”

Thus his pale and folksy wardrobe must have offered quite a contrast with E. A. Taylor’s “advanced artistic-style” Glasgow school pieces in the Wylie & Lochhead factory stand nearby – both, however, remarkable departures from the dark, heavy Renaissance revival furniture popularised in the Victorian era.

Lotted with a matching suite of bedroom furniture at Weller’s of Guildford on December 7, the wardrobe carried a pre-sale estimate of £15,000£25,000, but was mysteriously withdrawn by its owner shortly before kick-off.

Heal’s wardrobe (Weller’s, Guildford).