North America

A feature of Milestone’s spring toy sale in Willoughby, Ohio, on April 9 will be a collection of over 60 Popeye-related toys.

The original doctorate certificate awarded to Albert Einstein by the University of Zurich in 1905 will be a highlight offering at Bonhams in New York.

A characteristically elaborately pierced and carved oak hall chair by the US furniture maker and designer Charles Rohlfs (1853-1936) proved to be the toast of the most recent Cottone (20% buyer’s premium) auction.

The Edison Class M cylinder phonograph was initially intended for business dictation but in time entertainment became its main role.

Potter & Potter’s Fine Literature & Modern Firsts Sale on April 26 in Chicago includes a copy of Oscar Wilde’s (1854-1900) The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

California dealership Denenberg Fine Arts has sold a full set of 80 prints from the Jugendstil magazine PAN to Chicago’s Driehaus Museum.

Running to 63 photographs, a virtually complete set of those produced for Carleton Watkins’ 1863 publication '…Photographic Views of the Falls and Valley of Yosemite' in Mariposa County, California featured in a January 27 sale at Nate D Sanders (25% buyer’s premium) of Los Angeles.

The best-seller at $400,003 (£296,300)* in a recent sale at RR Auction was a doubly signed receipt in which Johann Sebastian Bach acknowledges payment of the sum of five guilders under the terms of Sabina Nathan’s legacy.

The ivory regulations of New York State will be reviewed by New York court judges following an appeal brought by two US antique dealer associations.

This Regina disc and double comb-operated upright musical box is expected to be one of the highlights when Woody Auction in Kansas offers the collection of David and Marlene Howard from Ohio on March 19.

Hindman will cover four centuries of American artists and craftsmen in its March 10-11 American Furniture, Folk & Decorative Arts auction in Cincinatti.

One of the stand-out lots at Sotheby’s New York (26/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) was a 1949 first printing of The Intelligent Investor.

Italian liqueur tempts buyer to pay highest price at dedicated sale

The highlight of the sale held by Clarke (25% buyer’s premium) on February 6 proved, as expected, to be Fernand Leger’s (1881-1955) gouache Les Loisirs.

This splendid example of the illustrative work of Edmund Dulac, a watercolour, gouache and ink drawing on paper, is his original artwork for one of the 28 plates he produced for a 1911, Hodder & Stoughton edition of Stories from Hans Andersen.