Auctioneers

Sotheby’s have extended their credit facility by $50m to $250m, bringing them greater room for manoeuvre in competing for business.

GROWING Essex auctioneers Sworders have expanded their reach into Suffolk with the acquisition of the venerable Sudbury firm Olivers. Plans are also underway for a new auction centre situated on a brownfield site just north of their current location in Stansted Mountfitchet.

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The second tranche of a private collection of nutmeg graters was offered at Woolley & Wallis’ October 19 sale.

The stock-in-trade and private collection of Maurice Turpin who died in March, will be sold by Christie’s in London next spring. Two sales, on March 9 and 14, will offer over 800 items and are estimated to fetch over £2m.

The final 51 lots of Woolley & Wallis’s sale on October 19 comprised the Fauconberg & Conyers Heirlooms.

“Someday,” wrote The Times in August 1912, “collectors will ransack the town for Martin’s artistic stonewares.”

COIN dealers Noble Investments have announced the acquisition of Baldwin’s, the London-based coin dealers and auctioneers, in a reverse take-over.

The cosy Dorset town of Sherborne is not usually associated with bloody revolution and armed struggle, but Sherborne-based Charterhouse Auctioneers have unearthed two items redolent with memories of the American Revolution.

The emerging class of wealthy Chinese buyers continues to boost the top-end of the art and antiques market in the Far East. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that Sotheby’s set a house record in this autumn’s Hong Kong series, taking HK$850.9m (£61.7m) from seven sales.

Setting a new house record for Holloways of Banbury, this enigmatic alabaster urn shot to £170,000 (plus 15% buyer’s premium) on October 18.

BY IVAN MACQUISTENROBERT Brooks has been nailing his colours to the mast in more ways than one in the past week.

Christie’s, the first Western auction house to establish a representative office in China in 1994, have joined forces with Forever, a newly-established Beijing-based auction house, to hold their first sale in mainland China next month.

THE 20th century fashion and accessories sales at Christie’s South Kensington (20/12% buyer’s premium) are not the firm’s biggest money-spinners.

When Alex Butcher’s eye was drawn to this painting, right, he did not realise that part of the attraction might have been its familiarity.

London coin and stamp specialists Spink have been awarded an additional Royal Warrant for their services in philately.

LVMH have sold their 49.9 per cent shareholding in auction house Bonhams 1793 back to Bonhams.

Red tape continues to delay compensation payments in the Sotheby’s/Christie’s collusion case, despite assurances that they would be made by the end of September.

A French court has upheld the right of Paris auction firm Artcurial to use the name F. Tajan in their full title Artcurial Briest-Le Fur-Poulain-F. Tajan.