Christie's

A book billed as the work that marked the birth of modern business will be the subject of a single-lot auction at Christie’s New York on June 12.

Spring is a traditional point in the saleroom calendar for New York to mount its tribal art auctions.

A Qianlong (1736-95) three-colour lacquer throne provided the London series of Asian art sales with its headline moment.

Some eye-catching individual prices punctuated the latest Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art sales in New York, helping to lift the year-on-year total .

Collections from two former British prime ministers – Sir Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher – sold out at auction in the same week.

This over life-sized marble bust depicts Emperor Didius Julianus, who ruled the Roman empire for just a few short months in the year 193AD. His fleeting 66-day reign took place during the tumultuous period known as ‘The Year of the Five Emperors’ and came to a grisly end when he was murdered by a common soldier.

Among the top lots at Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) trio of Old Master sales during ‘Classic Week’ was a rediscovered oil sketch by Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) for 'The Distribution of the Eagle Standards'.

For antiquities aficionados, the pinnacle of Christie’s ‘Classic Week’ in New York was its single-owner offering of 40 exquisitely carved intaglios and cameos hailing from the ancient world.

One of the few images of a 16th century Eastern potentate by a Western artist emerged from a ‘royal collection’ to sell for a multi-estimate sum at Sotheby’s.

While Sotheby’s and Christie’s no longer hold regular dedicated auctions of European ceramics, they still cater for elements of this market in their main centres worldwide via series of mixed-discipline traditional decorative arts auctions.

This 3ft 10in (1.15m) wide Qianlong (1736-95) three-colour lacquer throne merits a catalogue of its own and an £800,000-1.2m estimate at Christie’s in London on May 14.

The latest version of Christie’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) Collector sale in New York featured an interesting collection of equine pottery: an ensemble of 10 large-scale English pearl ware horses, the majority made in the Leeds pottery in the first half of the 19th century.