Auctions

A highlight of Sworders’ Country House sale in Stansted Mountfitchet on June 27 was a rare tinplate London omnibus.

Last offered at auction at Parke-Bernet in New York in 1945, as part of the famed Bronson Winthrop collection, a drawing made by John Tenniel for Alice through the Looking-Glass made $16,000 (£12,600) at Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on June 13 – though the saleroom had hoped it might make twice that sum.

This medieval gold posy ring with a Lombardic inscription is a type that was common in England and France in the 13th and early 14th centuries. After around 1350, Gothic script became popular.

Promoted in a catalogue issued by Fonsie Mealy (20/25% buyer’s premium) for its May 20 sale as something “for the collector who has (almost) everything”, an autograph section from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake was sold at €27,000 (£23,480).

'Tres Thomae…', by Thomas Stapleton, a leading Catholic theologian, is a set of three biographies of saints who shared his own first name. An exile from England, Stapleton was Professor of Theology at Douai at the time and his book was published there.

A selection of stand-out jewellery lots from regional auctions.

It is high season for sales in Paris and the Drouot auction centre, home to 75 firms, is busy with its usual roster across all disciplines.

For previous generations of artist jewellers, from René Lalique to Andrew Grima, retail sales and private commissions were everything. Typically it was only much later in the collecting lifecycle, after a period of posthumous reassessment and rediscovery, that their work appeared at auction with any great regularity.

Original D-Day invasion flags may be fragile and rare but a spate of them has appeared on the market recently in the US.

A “jewel-like” painting of a young girl reading by Edward Frampton (1870-1932) starred in Dominic Winter’s (19.5% buyer’s premium) June 15 sale.

A London street view by the northern English artist Harry Rutherford (1903-85) led the sale at Chiswick Auctions (22% buyer’s premium) on June 13.

Indian design was a prolific influence in Carlo Giuliano’s style. Already seen at the 1851 Great Exhibition, interest in technicolour jewellery from the sub-continent rose to new levels when Victoria became Empress of India in 1876.