1) The 'barn find' coming in at 26ft long and made of timber – and now up at auction
Classic car enthusiasts talk reverentially about ‘barn finds’ but this term can be applied in a literal sense to an upcoming auction lot in West Sussex.
St John's Barn - the dismantled building is being sold by Summers Place Auctions by May 19 with an estimate of £70,000-100,000 (image courtesy Tom Ames Photography).
2) A painted chest from the 'untouched' contents of a Somerset country house is among five lots to watch at auction
The contents of a Somerset country house, untouched for 60 years, are among five previews of upcoming items.
Continental painted chest with unicorns dated 1857 - estimate £200-400 at Charterhouse on May 5.
3) Benin plaque withdrawn from auction after curator raises provenance questions
The increasingly contentious issue of selling Benin works of art at auction raised its head again last week after an ancestral plaque catalogued as 16th or 17th century was withdrawn from an East Sussex sale.
The bronze plaque catalogued as a Benin bronze ancestral plaque from the 16th-17th century that was withdrawn from Burstow & Hewett.
4) Rare $2m Meissen collection restituted to Jewish family comes to market in New York this autumn
A collection of Meissen porcelain assembled by the Oppenheimer family and recently restituted to their heirs is coming to auction this September.
A Meissen clock case modelled by George Fritzsche, dated 1727 and photographed in Berlin, 1927 when it was in the collection of the Oppenheimer family. Photo credit: Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Sammlung Margarete und Franz Oppenheimer.
5) Changes at the top at Phillips as Sotheby’s restructures Fine Art division
Sotheby’s and Phillips have announced a number of changes in personnel.
Brooke Lampley, Amy Cappellazzo and Mari-Claudia Jiménez at Sotheby's.
This list is based on unique users for individual news stories over the period April 29-May 5, 2021.
