Lyon & Turnbull

SO-CALLED castle-top boxes represent a fascinating moment in British social history. Fashioned by the silver ‘toy’ makers of Birmingham, these vinaigrettes and card cases engraved or die-stamped with British landmarks were seemingly marketed as tourist souvenirs.

Fireworks were seen in Edinburgh on November 5 when this Charles Voysey secretaire leapt above its modest £3000-5000 estimate to sell for £70,000 at Lyon & Turnbull's Decorative Arts sale.

Edinburgh-based auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull have taken the decision to restructure their operation in the South of England. While the London office will continue as before, they have parted company with three members of staff.

THE question of authenticity remains high on the agenda in the Banksy market after a last-minute intervention by the self-styled guerrilla artist had a devastating effect on Lyon & Turnbull’s latest attempt to break into the London contemporary art market.

Lyon & Turnbull are to turn the buyer’s premium system on its head by raising it for top-tier prices but cutting it for lower-priced lots in general sales.

With Bernard Cotton's scholarly new book on Scottish Vernacular Furniture coming out soon, where better to promote the event than North of the Border?

Two major silver collections will be sold by UK provincial salerooms in the autumn season. Edinburgh-based auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull will offer for sale the first part of the Chen collection in London on November 23, while Salisbury’s Woolley & Wallis will complement their October silver sale with a single-owner catalogue devoted to the collection of the late George Petzall.

The significance of this unassuming oval cabochon emerald ring, is far greater than first appears.

Auctioneers plan two £1m sales for 2008

Scottish auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull started off their year on January 10 with the sale of the Deloitte Art Collection at The Royal Academy in London.

Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull have been named among the runners up in the Bank of Scotland £25m Entrepreneur Challenge, a national competition designed to identify and support excellence in businesses.

The highlight of the English and Continental furniture and objects sale conducted Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh on March 21 was this walnut, rosewood veneered, satinwood crossbanded and parcel gilt side table c.1805.

Weighing 1.5 tonnes, Eduardo Paolozzi’s (1924-2005) Master of the Universe is winched into position outside the Edinburgh saleroom of Lyon and Turnbull. The sculpture, one of an edition of four, provided the highlight of the auctioneer’s first Contemporary Art Sale on September 1, selling to Edinburgh gallery Bourne Fine Art on behalf of a client at an artist’s record of £120,000 (plus buyer’s premium).

Lyon and Turnbull have announced a record turnover of almost £9m for their latest year of trading.

More than two decades since the first sale of golfing memorabilia, this once-booming niche market stands at an important crossroads.

Giving Scotland’s once-neglected art glass further standing in the saleroom, a good range of Monart and Ysasrt glass emerged at auction recently North of the Boarder.

Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull unveiled two new appointments at the official opening of their new London office on Tuesday, March 9.

It gives some idea as to how furniture connoisseurship has changed that the upholstered high-back chair pictured here could once have been accepted as an original furnishing from the bedroom of Mary Queen of Scots.

There was high drama at Lyon and Turnbull’s Edinburgh saleroom on March 26 when this celadon moonflask, left, estimated at £2000-3000, shot to a house record £275,000 (plus 19.5/12% buyer’s premium).

Two lavish catalogues, a DVD, three days at Syon House, trips to the USA and Hong Kong, acres of press coverage… Sotheby’s and Christie’s apart, seldom can a UK auction house have devoted more time, more energy and more money to promoting a sale than Lyon & Turnbull did with the Drambuie Collection.