International

Growth “across all value levels of the market” helped global sales at Christie’s increase by 26% to £5.1bn in 2017, says Orlando Rock, chairman of Christie’s UK.

Heritage Auctions says more than half of its sales are now made through the internet.

The most eye-catching price at the latest series of Old Master and 19th century art sales in New York came at Sotheby’s separately staged auction of drawings from the collection of the late Howard and Saretta Barnet.

Texas-based fine art and collectables specialist Heritage Auctions announced a number of new developments to its mobile app last month. Advances included one-touch mobile bidding and an extension to the barcode scanning facility for coins.

Extending from the tip of Manhattan as far north as 42nd Street, this large-scale Map of the City of New York of 1850 identifies by means of symbols and a key the city’s churches, schools, hotels, public buildings, parks, cemeteries and other places of interest.

The Japanese Legacy Symposium’s Samurai Armor Fair debuts this month.

Two exceptionally rare celestial globes or spheres have made their mark in Geneva and London salerooms in recent times – and on the same day.

An 800-year-old hurdy-gurdy, thought to be the oldest in Europe, features in a collection of 450 musical instruments from a German private museum coming up at auction.

The Australian professional auctioneering body has called for all auctioneers to introduce client accounts – known as trust accounts in Australia – to avoid a repeat of the grim situation at failed firm Mossgreen.

Mossgreen is only the latest in a list of auctioneers that have gone under owing money to its core customers – consignors.

I was enjoying the annual SLAD Christmas drinks in December, when a dealer started to recount an extraordinary experience he had with a German auction house.

Hermann Historica (23% buyer’s premium) of Munich mounted its customary assault on the arms and armour market with no fewer than seven catalogues covering more than 6000 objects, ranging from ancient Greek helmets to military and other vehicles.

Catalogued as “fresh and beautifully preserved”, a broadside printing of America’s Declaration of Independence authorised by the colony that had led the struggle against British rule, Massachusetts, was the star turn of the first major Americana auction of the year.

The American West was the theme of a 43-lot, single-owner collection offered as part of the January 17 sale held by Sotheby’s New York.