Sotheby's

Where scientific instruments are concerned, recent highlights such as Albert Einstein’s telescope or a working example of the Apple 1 computer could have been selected. However, we begin instead with the improved, four-rotor Enigma cipher machine.

Paris’ status as a centre of the tribal art market was underscored this season with a brace of high prices in the field of Oceanic art.

A copy of the first published work of the Brontë sisters sold for a record sum at Sotheby’s (25/20/12/5% buyer’s premium) on November 7, just a few months after a new high had been set at another London auction.

The latest Old Master auctions in London gave encouragement to the sector as keen competition came for a noticeably higher number of works pitched at relatively attractive levels.

Modern British art by blue-chip names drove demand during the week-long series of November sales in London.

Described as the ‘Proustian Holy Grail’ by Sotheby’s Paris (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium), one of just five special copies printed on Japanese paper of Marcel Proust’s Du côté de chez Swann sold for a premium-inclusive €535,000 (£471,780) in a sale of October 30.

George Orwell is the focus of a first look at a November 7 Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of books from The Library of an English Bibliophile, the seventh in that series to have been held since 2010. Orwell’s books made a significant contribution to the overall total.

Sotheby’s posted a record for the artist CRW Nevinson on November 21 when an important Great War scene was knocked down at £1.55m (£1.87m including premium).

Natural history works, together with books, prints, even pictures featuring aspects of hunting, were a key component of a Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of November 2 billed only as The Library of a European Gentleman.

Musical manuscripts, letters and photographs of composers offered at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on October 26 comprised the first part only of what was described as “a distinguished private collection” of books that is to be dispersed next year.

Featuring both real and mythical creatures, including a monstrous selection of denizens of the deep, this map of Iceland with its mountains, fjords, rivers, glaciers and a volcano is one of the more famous found in Ortelius’ Theatrum orbis terrarum.

Soviet art is in the spotlight this month as the London salerooms mark the anniversary year of the 1917 Russian Revolution with a series of trophy consignments to Russian Art Week.

In this 1917 Revolution centenary year, Soviet art assumes extra prominence at this season’s Russian series.