Auctioneers

Fellows is now the leading UK regional auctioneer by hammer total after recording overall sales of £17m in 2017.

Coin-grading firm The Certified Collectibles Group (CCG) has expanded again in the UK and will open an office in London in April on the third floor of dealership Spink’s headquarters.

A small collection of 18th century European porcelain offered by Reeman Dansie in Colchester included this Meissen teapot and cover c.1725.

A country house library in south-west Scotland was the source of an album of 19th century photographs of India that provided a Valentine’s Day surprise at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh.

This oil painting of the RMS Queen Mary, below, by marine painter William McDowell (1888-1950) was taken to a multi-estimate £12,000 at Surrey saleroom John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium).

Tim Wilkes, a leading expert in Islamic coinage, has joined the coin department at London auction house Dix Noonan Webb.

Chiswick Auctions (25/12% buyer’s premium) has held its first dedicated Old Masters sale, capitalising on the void left by Christie’s South Kensington’s closure last year.

Another classic piece of English furniture to go well above expectations was a Regency mahogany window seat in the style of George Bullock offered by the Cumbrian firm 1818 Auctioneers (17/12% buyer’s premium).

This late 19th century ‘natural history’ specimen purports to be the mummified body of a creature that was half mammal and half fish.

As with the overall market, Dutch furniture is much less popular than it once was and the 18th century walnut, floral marquetry and ivory-inlaid bombé bureau cabinet, below, had a couple of condition problems for bidders at Andrew Smith (19% buyer’s premium).

The great Hungarian love affair with Zsolnay Pec ceramics goes on, most recently witnessed in the East Sussex rooms of Burstow & Hewett (15% buyer’s premium) when 27 lots were offered.