Auctioneers

UK: This rare Märklin first series handpainted tinplate battleship, HMS Resolution, sold for $40,600 (£26,365) on April 12, having been offered online on sothebys.amazon.com (10 per cent buyer’s premium).

UK: MANCHESTER United may be the most successful football team in the world at present, but it was a reminder of the most tragic event in the history of the club which stirred bidders at Phillips sale of the Leslie Millman collection of team programmes and memorabilia at Old Trafford on April 10-11.

UK & US: PHILLIPS’ traditional reputation as the permanent poor relation of Sotheby’s and Christie’s at the top end of the international art market could be turned on its head by a clutch of high value consignments soon to be offered in London and New York.

UK: THE prophet Ezekiel may not have recognised this Victorian model from the original which he was told to build by a shining man “upon a very high mountain” 3000 years ago, but no matter – this scale version of Solomon’s Temple stands alone as a unique creation in the public spirit.

UK: Two Victorian scale models of ancient temples turned up in the salerooms at the start of Spring, the Temple of Solomon at Bonhams on March 29 (see "Victorian scale model of the Temple of Solomon", above) and this erudite copy of the Parthenon at the Chester salerooms of Halls on April 5.

UK: ESSEX-based auctioneers G.E. Sworders & Sons have revived ties with Hertfordshire by taking over Andrew Pickford in Hertford.

UK: Christie’s are to sell a selection of works of art from the Wernher Collection, expected to fetch over £10m, as the highlight of their summer season.

UK: FEW silhouettes are as desirable as those portraits of military officers produced by John Buncombe, and few of those are as valuable as the example illustrated here, which was the highlight of a residual 17-lot group of silhouettes from the Christie Collection, consigned to Christie’s (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) South Kensington sale on March 14.

UK: ONE of the most important drawings to appear at auction in London will be put up for sale at Christie's on July 4.

UK: IN THE primitive pantheon of vernacular furniture, the bread and cheese cupboard is an unusually specialised form, hence the immense interest from country furniture buffs in the oak example here which was consigned to the Colwyn Bay rooms of Rogers Jones and Co. for sale on February 29.

UK: TURNOVER figures posted by provincial auctioneers for the year January to December 1999 revealed a turnaround in the positions of the top two firms.

UK: THIS Linthorpe pre-Columbian-style pottery vessel, designed by Dr Christopher Dresser during his time as Art Superintendent at John Harrison's Middlesborough factory c.1879-81, was sold to London's New Century by Darlington auctioneer Thomas Watson & Son for £1500 (plus 15 per cent premium) on March 21.

CHRISTIE'S and Sotheby's announced a substantial increase in turnover for 1999, each registering total sales in the world art market of $2.3 billion (£1.46bn).

UK: SOTHEBY'S are to sell a remarkably well-preserved and restored 18th century Spitalfields London town house and its contents, the home of the late Michael Gillingham, a well-known London art and antique dealer.

AUSTRIA: THE ENTRY of Jörg Haider's far-right Freedom Party into the Austrian government could have repercussions for the country's art market, warns Otto Hans Ressler, director of Austria's second-largest auction firm Wiener Kunst.

SOTHEBY’S will raise their buyer’s premium on April 1, one day after Christie’s are due to do the same.

FRANCE: ARTEMIS, the holding company belonging to Christie’s owner François Pinault, have acquired the Paris auction group Piasa.

UK: The factors which make for a desirable cased fish are four-fold: the case (bowfronts are most popular), the label of a good taxidermist such as Cooper, condition and (as the joker in the pack) the beast itself.

UK: HAVING ascribed it to the Italian School of the 13th/14th century in their auction advertisement, Hy. Duke now believe that this 73/4 x 9in (20 x 23cm) oil on panel, right, is in fact the pinnacle – missing for 150 years – of the Madonna panel by Nardo Di Cione (1343-1366).

From a Ligurian Spring by Henry Herbert Lathangue (1859-1929) sold for £330,000 plus 15 per cent premium at Bearne’s Spring Seasonal Sale, Exeter on March 1.