Bonhams

A remarkable Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes collection which was consigned to auction by their daughter, Frieda Hughes, ran to some 100 lots and formed a separately catalogued part of a recent Knightsbridge sale.

The work of the MacMahon photographic studio of Aberdeen, this extraordinary carbon print was made in 1908 and depicts ‘Giant Cod Specimens…’ bought and cured by A&M Smith, a local fish processing and curing business.

Early recipe books can make for absorbing and, to modern readers, occasionally comic or puzzling reading, as demonstrated in three examples from recent sales.

Successful lots in a Bonhams New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) March 9 auction included, at $85,000 (£61,595), a letter that Einstein wrote to his son, Hans Albert, on the very day in September 1945 that the Second World War officially ended.

More than $120m of Asian art was sold at auction during last week’s New York Asia Week.

“It’s not the age or pedigree – it’s the look of the piece.” The phrase became less a heresy and more a cliché during the latter years of the furniture boom of blessed memory, when the increasingly influential decorator trade was spending substantial sums on 19th and early 20th century reproductions.

On the Baroque façade of Girona Cathedral in Catalonia stands the figures of Saint Joseph and Saint James, carved in the 1960s by local sculptor Anton Casamor (1907-79).

Tutu, a previously lost portrait by Ben Enwonwu (1917-94) of the Ife royal princess Adetutu Ademiluyi set a new record for the artist at Bonhams’ Africa Now auction.

The 20th century portraitist Meredith Frampton (1894-1984) achieved remarkable success in a relatively short career.

A Parisian Book of Hours dating to c.1440-50 was among illuminated or decorated manuscripts sold during in the closing weeks of 2017.

With options to sell at regular intervals in North America, Europe, Hong Kong or China, the major auction houses and their vendors take a global view of the Asian art market.

German-made painted wood Noah’s arks, appealing to folk art and toy collectors alike, don’t get much better than the mid- 19th century example sold at Bonhams Knightsbridge.

Under the overall command of James Clark Ross, one of the earlier major expeditions to the Antarctic regions focused principally on magnetic and geographical investigations – but others aboard had different priorities.

Printed in Mexico in 1787, but promoted as the first book in English printed west of the Mississippi, a slim work of just 14 leaves in contemporary paper wrappers called A Short Abridgment to Christian Doctrine was one of the rarer items offered in a recent California sale.

A fascinating archive of designs for Brunel’s Thames Tunnel sold at Bonhams was bought by a museum dedicated to the pioneering structure to form the centrepiece of a £4.5m expansion, it has been revealed.

Further discoveries from recent New York and London auctions including polar rarities.