Auctioneers

The designated tribal art department at Woolley & Wallis (22% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury is now in its third year – and increasingly picking up consignments and regular buyers from well beyond its immediate hinterlands.

The European decorative arts that preceded the tribal session at John Nicholson’s (24% buyer's premium) on October 10 had included a handful of notable bids, not least the £14,500 (estimate £300-500) tendered by an Italian buyer for a small early 20th century Louis Vuitton leather box measuring just 11in (27cm) across.

Pictures, prints and taxidermic displays accounted for the larger part of the Ornithology Sale held by Keys (17.5% buyer’s premium) on September 22, but it also offered some 175 book lots, many of them multiples.

The Winchester saleroom Andrew Smith & Son (15% buyer’s premium) unearthed eight works by two of Singapore’s most celebrated 20th century artists for sale on September 13.

Sold for £1100 by Chiswick Auctions (23% buyer’s premium) on September 27 was a copy of the posthumously published, 1633 first of Henry Briggs’ Trigonometria britannica….

Originally due to be hosted by Rome, the 1906 eruption of Vesuvius meant that London was a late replacement to hold the fourth modern Olympiad in 1908.

An example of the extremely rare, “surreptitious” edition of John Flamsteed’s Historia Coelestis… – a star atlas that is one of the great rarities in its field – made a record £43,000 at Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on September 27.

A double-sided drawing by Alberto Giacometti of his classic elongated head and figure designs has been sold at auction in Cambridge for £130,000.

More than 400 objects from Howard Hodgkin’s (1932-2017) London home and studio will go under the hammer at Sotheby’s on October 24 in New Bond Street.

Children’s books sold at Forum included a couple of appealing Beatrix Potter items that were first owned by Francis William Clark, who was just two when he was sent a 1912 first of The Tale of Mr Tod.

Huge new auction centre ready to launch on the edge of Bedford includes five salerooms...

Keys is holding two specialist sales next year to whet the appetite. Not only does the Norfolk auction house have a shipshape selection dedicated to ‘local hero’ Nelson, but it has also secured the diploma collection of the Royal Society of Marine Artists (RSMA), Tom Derbyshire writes.

As part of a fifth anniversary auction at Farleigh Court Golf Club on November 1, Catherine Southon is offering the first part of an archive consigned by the family of the commercial artist and cartoonist Francis Wilford-Smith (1927-2009).

During his nights spent ‘fire-spotting’ for flying bombs during the Blitz, it is said the artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare (1888-1956) would while away the hours filling sketchbooks.

Thomson Roddick has been running auctions across Scotland for more than 130 years but is now planning to expand its operations in the Borders.

Newly-independent Dreweatts will hold a third – and probably final – Mallett stock sale from Donnington Priory next month.

Half a dozen works by the obscure British artist Valentine Dobrée (1891-1974) sold for multi-estimate sums at Reeman Dansie (20% buyer’s premium) in Colchester on September 26-27.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi will more than double the Old Master auction record when it is offered at Christie’s New York next month.