Auctioneers

As auction houses expand their specialist sales programmes, separate departments can also develop if the volume of business is worth it. Not many have a dedicated single-owner department, however.

Cirencester auction house Moore Allen & Innocent will offer a cache of uncensored letters written by a prominent First World War officer.

A brief letter of 1864 in which Ulysses S Grant agrees to General William T Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’, a bold plan to destroy Atlanta, then march across Georgia to Savannah or Charleston during the American Civil War, sold for $100,000 (£75,755) on October 19, at Heritage Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Dallas.

Not many new faces at salerooms can include among their experience “a trained horse whisperer”.

A mid-19th century scrimshaw carved whalebone walking cane sold for a house record of £17,000 (plus 18% buyer’s premium) at East Bristol Auctions on November 9.

Earlier works in an October 18 sale held by Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) included a scarce 1688 first of Randle Holme’s The Academy of Armory, or a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon, an heraldic work by the third member of a distinguished Chester family of heraldic painters and genealogists to bear that name. It made £1200.

In business for 20-plus years, former Sotheby’s auctioneer Catherine Southon, founder of the eponymous auction house and antiques TV presenter, takes nothing for granted.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

“I died in hell – they called it Passchendaele,” Siegfried Sassoon famously wrote of the First World War carnage which ended in November 1917.

A collection of market-fresh pictures with a distinctive Surrealist streak found favour with buyers at Charterhouse (21% buyer’s premium) in Dorset.

Celebrating its 20th birthday in the British Museum’s refurbished Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery on November 9, the board of Asian Art in London was clearly proud of its achievements in promoting the city’s Asian art credentials.

“No one can rival Thomas Cole for engraving in the 19th century,” said director Jamie South after this exhibition-quality carriage clock sold for £26,000 (plus 20% premium) at Gardiner Houlgate in Horsham, Bath, on October 25. It went to an American buyer towards the top end of the estimate.

A sale devoted to pieces by French designers and held in the French capital proved to be a winning formula for Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) latest auction in this category on October 31.

British and Irish watercolours piqued the interest of bidders at Tennants’ (18.5% buyer’s premium) Country House sale in Leyburn on October 14.

Forum Auctions has expanded its modern and contemporary prints and editions department with two new appointments.

This archetypal still-life by Cecil Kennedy (1905-97) topped Halls’ (20% buyer’s premium) £300,000 auction on October 18.

A Nobel prize-winner’s gold medal awarded to a British scientist is to go under the hammer in Hollywood as part of Julien’s Auctions sale on November 17.