Auctioneers

A well-wrapped and padded pair of boxing gloves are essential, one would think, for victory in the ring. But arguably it was the defective nature of the left hand glove, pictured here, which gave Cassius Clay his win over Henry Cooper in 1963, after letting him off the hook.

UK: The highest and arguably most unexpected result in the 19th century section of Sotheby’s July 11 Works of Art sale came with the piece pictured here, a 3ft 7in (1.1m) high silvered statue of Galatea by Max Klinger which sold for £220,000. The subject is a characteristically symbolist work showing the sea nymph seated on a mottled grey marble throne carved with dolphins and is perhaps inspired by Gustave Doré’s painting shown at the 1880 Salon, and by Huysmann’s novel A Rebours.

UK: Christie’s Continental Furniture sale on July 4 (17.5/10% buyer's premium) included a small nine-lot section devoted to Neapolitan piqué work: tortoiseshell objects inlaid with mother-of-pearl and silver, which proved decidedly popular.

“Everyone’s looking over their shoulder and being careful not to overstock at the moment,” says Stephen Mould of Sotheby’s (10% buyer’s premium), whose June 27-28 single-owner sale of Finest and Rarest Wines The Great Collection nonetheless took £2.4m, the fourth highest total ever achieved for a single-owner wine sale.

THEY came, they saw, they appeared interested – but on sale day at Holloways, Banbury, the buyers, particularly the trade, were in the cautious sort of mood auctioneers across Britain have been experiencing in the quiet post-Olympia days.

UK: This article looks at a magnificent Book of Hours illustrated for one of the wealthiest prelates and patrons of the arts in 16th century Europe, Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg.

While Lyon & Turnbull enjoyed the lion’s share of the audience for the two sales in Edinburgh at the end of June, Phillips (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) at least had the most surprising result in the form of this Tunbridgeware sewing/writing table by Fenner and Co., estimated at £300-500.

UK: Sleek, stylish, Art Deco abstraction is what counts most in a design for Clarice Cliff collectors and this piece, which came up for sale at Phillips (15/10% buyer’s premium) on July 5 possessed it in spades.

UK: A week of exhibitions and sales of Old Master drawings reached its zenith on July 10 when this miniature silverpoint sketch by Leonardo da Vinci appeared at Christie’s King Street.

BONHAMS & BROOKS confirmed on Friday evening that they are to merge with Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg, ending a week of speculation that this move was imminent.

UK: If proof were needed that it is collector’s silver that is the most desirable category of ware in today’s market one could have had no better example than the sale held by Bonhams & Brooks (15/10% buyer’s premium) last Thursday, July 5. This 261-lot auction was especially strong on vertu and collectors items swelled by a number of private collections.

THE 1140 lots of arms and armour held offered by Birmingham specialists Weller & Dufty (15% buyer’s premium) on June 13 encompassed most forms of dealing out death and sparked enthusiasm from a range of collectors and dealers. But the pick of the day was this fine cased pair of 18-bore flintlock duelling/officers’ pistols.

“WILL SUPERGIRL callously break the hearts of her athletic team mates by winning all the international sports events as her Linda Danvers identity?...” begins the gripping storyline of a 12pp comic strip artwork by Kurt Schaffenberger that sold for £880 in the US section of this online and postal summer comics sale at Comic Book Postal Auctions on June 12.

MAINTAINING their policy of high-content, budget priced sales, the Norfolk auctioneers Keys put up a bumper June offering with a 1540-lot antique sale on June 26 and 27 following a 1236-lot collectors’ sale on June 14. Occasionally there emerges a high-priced star at these antiques offerings but in the quieter days of summer the best bid came for a Georgian-style pedestal birdcage supper table, 3ft 1in (94cm) which sold at £2450.

UK: THE biannual sale of ceramics, glass, Oriental wares and decorative arts at Phillips’ Midlands operation saw keen enough trade and private bidding to produce a £138,000 sale total with a very respectable 82 per cent sold by lot.

Everyone dreams of coming across a real gem at a car boot sale and this was the story behind a privately entered 19th century micro-mosaic oval panel in this Wotton Auction Rooms Gloucestershire sale on June 12-13.

BOUND in contemporary half morocco, one of 300 signed copies of the 1907 first edition of Rothschild’s Extinct Birds, containing 49, mostly chromo plates after Keulemans, Lodge, Grönvold, Smit and Frohawk, went at £3000 to a collector in the Sotheby’s sale of June 5.

UK: Sold for £48,000 to Quaritch at Christie’s on June 4& 6 was a recently rediscovered manuscript of William Gilpin’s book on Forest Scenery... (first published in 1791) that fills four volumes and contains 25 full and 20 half-page watercolour drawings by Gilpin, plus three pencil and wash drawings of animals by his brother Sawrey.

An incomplete copy of one of the masterpieces of English botanical illustration of the 19th century, Mrs Edward Berry’s Selection of Hexandrian Plants (1831-34), offered at Christie’s on June 4 & 6 contained only 45 (of 51) of the younger Robert Havell’s partially colour-printed and hand-finished engraved and aquatinted plates, but it brought a bid of £60,000 from the Oppenheimer Gallery.

Garden statuary is now an accepted part of the antiques market, but what about plants and trees? Auctioneers are prepared to sell anything that can remotely be classified as collectable these days, but there is a genuine case for admitting bonsai trees – works of art organic and antique – to the salerooms.