Germany

Comprehensive collection amassed over 30 years attracts very choosy buyers at auction.

Two suits of armour that emerged in recent auctions at Continental salerooms.

Topping the results list at a recent sale at Grisebach (30/25/20% buyer’s premium) in Berlin was a work by the German Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner that was created on island in the Baltic.

German and Latin versions of ‘Nuremburg Chronicle’ impress in separate sales.

One of the most iconic photographic images of war came under the hammer at a recent Westlicht (20% buyer’s premium) auction in Vienna.

Eight determined bidders were on hand when Karl & Faber (25% buyer’s premium) sold a floral still-life by Nicolaes van Veerendael (1640-91) at auction in Munich.

Since 1994, the New York businessman Richard Baron Cohen has been a welcome guest at international auctions, fairs and dealers.

Two pieces with imperial connections took the top honours during the November 5-23 sale at Hermann Historica (25% buyer’s premium) in Munich.

Since the early 1990s Wolfgang Thillmann, a German and philosophy teacher, has devoted himself to collecting Thonet bentwood furniture and become an internationally acknowledged expert in the process.

For 30 years the London lawyer David Cooper and his wife Marie devoted themselves to building a collection of Art Deco sculpture.

Chinese bidders were the driving force at this autumn’s German and Austrian auctions of Asian art.

Along with Pallas’ 'Flora Russica', the 'Icones Plantarum novarum… floram Rossicam' of the German-Estonian botanist Carl Friedrich von Ledebour is recognised as one of the great works on Russian flora.

The three volumes noted here are English language highlights of a separately catalogued, 380-lot, single-owner collection in the October 30-November 1 series of sales held by Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) that was offered under the title Wirtschaft und Staat – or Economy and State.

A cartographic highlight of the mammoth October 30-November 1 series of sales held by German auction house Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) was the Insulae Moluccae… map shown below, which sold for almost four times the estimate at €38,000 (£33,670).

The London watchmaker John Ilbery, active from 1780-1839, is credited with the invention of the ‘montre chinoise’, highly ornate goldenamel watches made for the Chinese market.

The sales of Asian art at Lempertz in Cologne traditionally devote a large selection to Japanese works of art and the auction on December 7-8 is no exception.

In 1921, the opening of the spring trade fair in Leipzig was accompanied by inauguration of the socalled Porzellan Palais.

Among the lots in the sale of porcelain and works of art at Metz in Heidelberg on December 15 about 80 Asian pieces come from an old German collection that was on loan to the state museums in Berlin for many decades from 1963 onwards.

The year 1907 was a decisive one in the artistic development of Lyonel Feininger (1871- 1956). In the previous year he had left his wife and family and moved with his new partner Julia Berg to Paris, where their son Andreas was born.

Catching the eye in a German auction was a fine example of the most beautiful of all piscatorial plate books.