Auctioneers

Prisoner-of-war work is the name given to intricately crafted small objects created from carved bone or wood and straw marquetry by captured French prisoners languishing in the hulks and other jails during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

WOOLLEY and Wallis silver specialist Alex Butcher is well known for his expertise in the spoon world, but his most recent offering at the Salisbury saleroom took the specialisation a step further.

Remarkable for both their size and their original condition, this pair of Italian console tables c,1760 sold for £28,000 Semley Auctioneers of Shaftesbury in Dorset on January 24.

MEMENTOS of the notorious Kray Twins amassed while they served life sentences in Parkhurst and Broadmoor were offered in some 160 lots at Chiswick Auctions on the evening of January 26.

Fittingly for a man whose career started in the 1930s, last week's sale of the Roger Warner collection at Christie's South Kensington was just like old times.

Today Robert Baden-Powell is best known as the founder of the Boy Scout movement in 1908, but in the Edwardian era his name was synonymous with the Boer War, and specifically the 217 wretched days from October 1899 to May 1900.

SALES in 2008 in Paris saw Sotheby’s and Christie’s occupy the top two spots for the first time – and open up a significant gap on the rest of the field.

Lawrences of Crewkerne are to sell items of stock from former antiques dealers Dodge and Son Limited of Sherborne. The instructions come from the dealership’s administrators, Bishop Fleming.

The death last year aged 98 of Roger Warner brought to a close the long career of one of the last old school eclectic but knowledgeable country dealers.

NORMAN Adams Ltd., leading specialists in classic English period furniture for more than eight decades, are shutting their Knightsbridge showrooms and putting their current stock into a sale at Sotheby’s.

A former long-term employee of New England auctioneers Skinner has been indicted by a grand jury for allegedly stealing over $724,000 worth of cash and auctioned property.

The evocatively named Pickleherring factory is one of the earliest known locations where English delftware was produced.

Golding Young have acquired fellow Lincolnshire auctioneers Eleys.

BONHAMS’ latest silver auction was another sale of two parts. Around a third of it was devoted entirely to one specialist collecting field, early spoons, the bulk from one vendor, Mr Britton Smith.

AT points, the catalogue of items from the Vaughan family collection sounded like the script for ‘Monty Python and The Holy Grail’.

It took them over a week, but Bonhams have now been able to announce a new record for a piece of 19th century furniture achieved. The new high was achieved when this French ormolu, lacquer and Brazilian rosewood cabinet imitating the shape of a Japanese shodana realised a mighty £1.8m.

A Borders property provided Thomson Roddick (15% buyer's premium) with a sensational discovery for their sale in Rosewell, Edinburgh on December 4.

A FAMILY feud has led to yet another cancellation of the sale of 63 works of art by Oskar Schlemmer, one of the central figures of the Bauhaus.

The Chinese ceramics and works of art market is undergoing a price readjustment after a decade of unfettered growth, a trend highlighted at the latest Asian sales series staged at Christie's Hong Kong.

Fifty-six works from the Vaughan family estate of Hengwrt, Nannau and Rug in Merionethshire, many of which have been in The Welsh Museum, Cardiff following the sale of the house several years ago, were dispersed without reserve by Tamlyn's of Bridgwater, Somerset, on December 9.