North America

In May 1983 the eyes of arms and armour bidders were fixed firmly on the £6m sale of the Hever Castle collection at Sotheby’s in London.

Published in 1851 by Richard Bentley as The Whale, the first English edition of Herman Melville’s tale preceded the American issue by four weeks.

Large 18th century English doll passed by descent is a highlight of toy auctions.

This c.1960s Japanese Robot Rocket Ship made by Modern Toys (Masudaya) will feature in the two-day Basics summer auction to be held by Bertoia on August 22-23.

This clown acrobat of c.1910 is one of around 150 automata from the Michael Kam collection that feature in the Potter & Potter August 24 auction in Chicago.

Published in 1931, Pearl S Buck’s 'The Good Earth' was the best-selling novel in the US for both that and the following year, as well as the winner of a Pulitzer Prize.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

These two posters which will be offered for sale by Swann Auction Galleries in New York on August 7 illustrate the convoluted history of the Olympic Games during the Second World War era.

This poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps is one of the rarer entries in Heritage Auctions’ July 27-28 sale of posters to be held in Dallas.

This pair of c.1970s Italian Onda (Wave) lounge chairs in chrome and leather designed by Giovanni Offredi for Saporiti Italia will feature in the Downtown Los Angeles Collections and Estates auction to be held on Sunday, July 28, by the Andrew Jones auction house.

The marathon 12-hour 'Maharajas & Mughal Magnificence' auction of jewellery and works of art from the Al Thani family held in New York last month was a once-in-a-generation event.

Top lot in a June 6 sale of maps, natural history and other colour plate books held in New York was a rare map by Lewis Evans of what were then still the ‘Middle British Colonies’ in America.

Jackson’s of Cedar Falls, Iowa, has a reputation for selling Russian works of art. Its sale on July 30 will include 19 lots from the collection of William Garner Welbon (1866-1960) that have remained with his family.

The Hammerhead shark plate shown below is not as colourful as many of the other 432 featured in a generally fine and complete copy of Marcus Elieser Bloch’s Ichthyologie… sold recently, but certainly one of the more eye-catching.

Works produced in the 1940s by Al Hirschfeld figured prominently among the higher priced lots at a June 4 Illustration Art sale held in New York.