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RECENT auctions held by Pacific Book Auctions have tended to be driven to a large extent by absentee bidding and by those using the ‘Real-Time Bidder’ internet option, but for a March 25 sale devoted to one man’s collection of letters, photographs, drawings and other mementoes relating to the life of William Randolph Hearst, those old fashioned habits of turning up in the room or even just picking up a telephone were dusted off.

ONE notable item from the Bonhams & Butterfields sale of March 23 was a rare copy of Jacques Gautier d’Agoty’s colour printed Anatomie de la Tête of 1748 that made $19,000 (£10,220) – but not the top price lot, a Gershwin sketchbook that made $100,000, or indeed several other interesting items.

LIVEAUCTIONEERS.COM, the Manhattan-based company that provides real-time Internet bidding capability to many US auction houses, has signed an agreement with Sotheby’s New York branch to provide its services for selected Sotheby’s sales.

THE international Asian art community descended upon New York in March to secure the most enticing exhibits in Manhattan’s two major Asian art fairs and numerous dealers’ shows. They were also there to contest the best quality Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Southeast Asian fare in Sotheby’s and Christie’s five specialist auctions that took place between March 23 and 25.

The Death of Munrow, depicting the attack by a tiger on a certain Mr Munroe in 1793 when he was out on a hunting party on Saugar Island in West Bengal, is one of the most dramatic and celebrated subjects to be recorded in Staffordshire earthenware. As a result it usually commands a high price when it comes up for sale at auction but few could have predicted the $130,000 (£74,285) (plus buyer’s premium) realised for the example that appeared at Sotheby’s New York last week.

A PORTRAIT of two of the ‘Scottsboro Boys’, illustrated right, topped this year’s sale of African-Americana at Swann’s when it was knocked down at $36,000 (£19,080). But there was also a bid of $20,000 (£10,600) on a group of 40 letters and telegrams addressed to Dickenson, Hill & Co. and S.R. Fondren, slave dealers of Richmond, Virginia, in the years 1836-62.

THE rarest and probably the earliest piece of printing in a February 26 sale held by Pacific Book Auctions of San Francisco, the papal indulgence from Wynkyn de Worde’s press seen right, was bid to $13,000 (£6890), but there were some other early items in the collection of editions of Aesop’s Fables formed by the late Dr Margaret Rose Quentin that opened the auction.

THE first day of a Belle Epoque sale held by Doyle of New York on February 25-26 awoke what one might, with greater reason than most, term a sleeper – the remarkable piece of furniture, catalogued as “An Italian Baroque style Mahogany Bed”, seen right. The bed was part of the Woodruff collection, comprising stock from a former Hollywood business that from 1922-60 was a popular rental source for the film studios, but stock that for the past 40 or more years has been in storage in Oklahoma.

HOT on the heels of the distinctly glitzy and upmarket Palm Beach Classic, a new fair, the Palm Beach Jewelry and Antique Show, moved into the same venue, the new Palm Beach County Convention Center, with a broader-based, much larger fair, and pulled it off.

ALTAR surrounds and other architectural elements from a 19th century Belgian church proved one of the bigger attractions at a February 8 sale held by in Los Angeles by Bonhams & Butterfields – a sale titled ‘Revival of the Centuries’.

TWO views of New York from what were, at the time, the city’s tallest buildings, are illustrated here. Both were part of the February 17 Swann’s sale of ‘100 Fine Photographs’, where ‘The Movement’, another of Frantisek Drtikol’s much admired pigment prints was scheduled to have become the sale’s best seller for the third time in a row, but in this instance failed to live up to expectations of $340,000-60,000.

NATURAL history auctions usually throw up some fascinating lots, from bugs in amber to fossilised fish, from meteorites to a range of precious and semi-precious rocks, and the January 11 sale held by I.M. Chait, in association with David Herskowitz, was no exception.

AFTER opening his gallery in the autumn of 2002 in the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street – a hive of Asian activity in New York at this time of year – Carlton Rochell enjoyed a major success last March with his inaugural exhibition of works from the Wesley and Carolyn Halpert Collection.

IT is no surprise that for many people, and not just committed aficionados of things Oriental, their favourite fair is The International Asian Art Fair. The event will be staged for the ninth time at The Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street, New York City from March 26 to 31, with a Gala Benefit for the Asia Society on the evening of March 25.

FOUNDED eight years ago as the Palm Beach International Art and Antiques Fair, and presented this year in a new location with a new name, Palm Beach Classic, this pioneering Florida fair has just cemented itself as one of the world’s top five international fixtures.

IF asked to nominate the subject of a commercial painting by Montague Dawson (1895-1973), most specialists and collectors would think of a clipper ship, preferably an American clipper in full sail on picturesquely choppy, but not too choppy, seas.

The title page of Hugh Maccaghwell’s On the Sacrament of Penance which, printed at Louvain in 1618, is recognised as “the first original work by a living author in Irish”. The few works printed in Irish that preceded it were the Bible, liturgical texts or translations of the works of others, but this was one of five works produced in the years 1614-18 at a press operated by the Irish Franciscans at St. Anthony’s in Louvain – the first press to print and promote Irish writing in the vernacular.

IT was not just Sotheby’s and Christie’s who were generating some exceptional prices for Old Masters in New York in the third week of January. The East 87th Street auctioneers Doyle’s (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) generated keen interest from TEFAF Maastricht exhibitors in the room when they included a moody Gottfried Schalken (1643-1706) canvas in their January 21 sale.

HOT on the heels of the upmarket, well-established Palm Beach Classic, the brand new Palm Beach Jewellery and Antique Show will be launched from February 13 to 17 at the same venue, the new Palm Beach Convention Center. The event is fully booked with a hefty 225 dealers but the astonishing fact is that no fewer than 70 of these are from the UK.

It wasn’t just top pieces of Americana and Old Master paintings that occupied the salerooms in New York last month, there was also a good selection of Chinese Export porcelain on offer. Christie’s were selling the third installment of the Benjamin Edwards III collection of Export Porcelain on January 20 plus an interesting mixed owner selection in their Captains and Kilns ceramics auction on the same day.