Auctions

Norfolk auction house Keys has marked the end of its 65th year in business by gaining independence from its estate agency parent company.

Serendipity had it that two important, but scantily catalogued, lots of European glass emerged for sale in the south of England in early January.

The Athenian silver dekadrachm c.469/465-460BC is among the ancient world’s most celebrated coins – and a splendid example appeared for sale in New York last week.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period January 3-9, 2019. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98) was the toast of London during the latest Victorian art sales held in the capital, where buyers continued to covet blue-chip Pre-Raphaelite art, market-fresh material – and invest in female names.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

A trademark nocturnal scene by Victorian painter John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-93) got away on low estimate for £80,000 at John Nicholson’s (25% buyer’s premium) of Haslemere in Surrey.

Earlier material in the last Comic Book Auctions (16% buyer’s premium) sale of the old year, which ended on November 25, included an original ink on card artwork of 1900 featuring Ally Sloper, whose pioneering comic debut had been made as early as 1867 in Judy, a comic rival to Punch.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from January 15-31, 2019.

The drive by, among others, the Royal Academy and the National Gallery to promote women’s importance in art would have required little effort had campaigners looked at the world of modern ceramics.

Adam Smith’s own copy bearing his simple bookplate makes £750,000 in London auction.

With the auction scene in Continental Europe at a traditional low ebb in the first month of the year, the focus for international art world activity shifts across to the US.

Among the first women potters recognised by the public as individual designers worthy of collecting were Hannah Barlow (1851-1916) and her sister Florence. The first women artists at Doulton’s Lambeth factory, they joined in 1871 and 1873 respectively.

A 1627, Ulm first of Johannes Kepler’s 'Tabulae Rudolphinae…', an important astronomical work named in honour of the then Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, sold for SKr350,000 (£30,535) on December 7.

For many years New York’s major salerooms mounted auction series of Old Master paintings, drawings and sculpture in the first months of the year immediately following their Americana series.

Christmas has little, if any, effect on collectors of vintage and antique toys, but that doesn’t stop auctioneers mounting festive season specials.

'A Book of Songs and Poems from the Old Testament and the Apocrypha', the Ashendene Press book of 1904 shown below, has in the past made as much as £2000 at auction.