Bonhams

Lots offered towards the start of sales at the same auction house prove successful.

The reason that an otherwise unexceptional 1737 English language edition of Horace’s 'Odes, Satyrs and Epistles' – lacking a portrait and three text pages – sold for the substantial sum of £50,000 in the Bonhams (27.5/25/20/13.9%) sale on June 26 is to be found on the front endpaper notes shown below.

Fine sets of pistols, preferably nicely cased, have long been the mainstay of London arms and armour sales. This season’s crop were not as plentiful nor so eagerly contested as we sometimes see, but there were some gems on offer and a selection of them are illustrated here.

In the days of the British Raj there was no shortage of would-be shikaris hoping to bag a tiger in India. At the same time plenty of London gunsmiths were ready to supply them with all the fire-power they could persuade them to buy.

Copies of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone impressed in several summer sales.

The collecting of English military swords is a science in itself.

While the vast majority of works at Old Master sales are by European artists, an unusual offering at Bonhams’ sale on July 3 was a Latin American work by a painter with Afro-Caribbean ancestry.

The 52-lot auction of furniture, paintings and works of art collected by members of the Rothschild family was among the most animated during a packed week of London showpiece sales.

After a bullish 2018 for the major Modern British art sales in London – during which Christie’s posted its strongest evening sale to date – results from the first ‘Mod Brit’ series of 2019 looked a little flat by comparison.

Much of the pre-sale publicity from Bonhams’ June 15 Mod Brit focused on Eric Gill’s (1882-1942) Girl with a Comb in her Hair (1928) – a market-fresh carved head and torso valued at £200,000-300,000 and admired for its unusual pose and luxuriant wavy hair.

A clock made for King William and Queen Mary by Thomas Tompion (1639-1713) was hammered down for £1.6m atThe Clive Collection of Exceptional Clockssale on June 19 at Bonhams.

With an infamous lack of a ‘signature’ look, Northern Irish painter Colin Middleton (1910-83) is something of an art historical chameleon.

Uncut and partially unopened, a truly exceptional presentation copy of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species… sold for a record $400,000 (£316,353) in a recent US sale.

As the battle for the ‘middle market’ heats up, the London auction scene today offers visitors a wider choice of items to buy and more places to bid for them.

An impressive 8in (20cm) high ice pail, cover and liner made what is thought to be a record auction result for Swansea porcelain when it sold for £38,000 hammer at Bonhams in Knightsbridge on June 5.

The latest week of Russian art auctions in London generated £35.8m including premium, the highest total for a June series in this category since 2014.