Auctions

Like many of the world’s major art markets these days, Paris concentrates activity in the Asian art field into series at specific times of the year in an attempt to attract those all-important buyers from Mainland China.

Entered by a leading UK college, two very similar pairs of mid-18th century mahogany lecterns, one illustrated above, became the focus of two major West Country dealers at Tayler & Fletcher’s (20% buyer’s premium) June 22 sale at Bourton-in-the-Water.

A further selection of children’s annuals from the Brenda Butler archive, characterised as usual by superb condition, provided some of the highlights of a May 2 sale at Comic Book Auctions (16% buyer’s premium).

At the Drouot auction centre in June around 3000 items of Asian art went under the hammer in a series of 20 auctions that were either dedicated sales or featured substantial Asian sections.

Sold for £55,000 by Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 14 was a newly discovered and very decorative portolan chart on vellum of the Mediterranean.

The island of St Helena featured in a folding plate from a 1598, first English edition of Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s famous Itinerario – published as Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies – offered by Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) on May 22.

ATG’s weekly selection of items on sale at auctions and dealerships.

A new auction house is to open in London hoping to find a gap in the market for cameras, scientific and medical instruments.

A moment of good old-fashioned saleroom drama emerged at Christie’s antiquities sale on July 5 when an Etruscan bronze mirror, estimated at £10,000-15,000, sold at £390,000 (plus 25/20/12% buyer’s premium). The buyer was a European institution.

“It is something, at the age of 31, to be among the most discussed, most successful, most promising, most admired and most hated British artists.” So wrote the critic Charles Lewis Hind about the war artist CRW Nevinson (1889-1946) in 1920.

Preserved in a fine contemporary binding of crimson morocco gilt that seems likely to have been specially commissioned by the artist from Pasqual Carsi y Vidal, a leading Madrid binder, a rare presentation set of Goya’s Los Caprichos prints sold for $500,000 (£393,700) at Christie’s New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 15.

Following a near sell-out auction of Lowestoft in March at Keys of Aylsham, another tranche is poised to go under the saleroom’s hammer.

ATG’s weekly selection of items on sale at auctions and dealerships.

Another work by CRW Nevinson (1889-1946) in the form of an aerial wartime print was offered in Gorringe’s (23% buyer’s premium) June 27 sale.

A June 16 sale at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne included theological works from the library of Edward Tottenham (1810-53), a cleric whose parishes were in Bath and Wells.

ATG’s weekly selection of items on sale at auctions and dealerships.

Over the last four months, a steady trickle of coaching scenes has been making its way onto the market via John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium).