Auctions

The latest sealed-bid sale at Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst produced some real surprises – none more so than the Edwardian painted wood and wrought-iron seesaw pictured here.

A pencil drawing by LS Lowry (1887-1976) set an auction record for a work on paper by the artist this week, selling for £175,000.

The latest cameras and photographic equipment auction at Special Auction Services of Greenham, near Newbury included two daguerreotypes by direct descent through the family of Antoine François Jean Claudet (1798-1867), the property of his great-great-great-granddaughter.

Anxious to arrest declining saleroom audiences, Bertoia Auctions in Vineland, New Jersey, chose to axe the buyer’s premium for bidders in the room for their sale on March 16.

Stuttgart auctioneers Nagel achieved a new German auction record for Oriental art when they sold a Yongzheng mark and period wine pot and cover for €2.8m (£2.37m).

It has to go down as one of the great car boot fair finds of all time. On June 26, Christie’s South Kensington will offer for sale this Breitling Top Time wristwatch, worn by Sean Connery in ‘Thunderball’.

The inaugural sale held by new London-based musical instrument auctioneers Ingles & Hayday generated a £2.26m total from 150 lots.

A first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone containing personal annotations and illustrations by author J.K. Rowling’s fetched £150,000 at a charity auction held at Sotheby’s in London last night.

A demand from the National Archives for lots to be withdrawn from auction at Tennants of Leyburn could have wider implications for the trade in historical documents.

Almost exactly a year after Graham Budd set a record for any football programme at auction he has done it again.

Possibly dating from the reign of Louis XIV, this fine boulle casket and stand was among an assortment of jewellery, silver, furniture and pictures at Thomas R. Callan’s sale in Ayr, south west Scotland.

Dreweatts will be conducting the first auction of a complete RHS Chelsea garden during this year’s flower show.

Billed as “the most important early printed book to be offered this century”, a deluxe vellum copy of the ‘Opera’ of Virgil is being offered at Christie’s on June 12.

Barnett Newman (1905-70) and Gerhard Richter (b.1932) starred at Sotheby’s evening sale of Contemporary art last night as the run of strong performing sales in this sector showed little sign of abating.

Holding a major silver sale days after the melt price has plummeted by about £3 an ounce is hardly ideal timing.

The highlight of Lyon & Turnbull’s sale of Decorative Arts was this copper and brass electrolier made in the workshops of the designer and architect William Arthur Smith Benson c.1900.

A painting by Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) entitled ‘Le petit pâtissier’ was the top lot of Christie’s latest evening sale of Impressionist & Modern art in New York.

Pearls and coloured stones remain strong – but, fuelled by interest from China (and, to a lesser, extent, the Middle East), so does amber.

Paul Cézanne’s ‘Les pommes’ led the way at Sotheby’s latest evening sale of Impressionist & Modern Art in New York.

Standing in the same spot where he had placed the winning £3.25m bid for an Egyptian statue of Isis six months before, London dealer Daniel Katz was again in action at Christie’s South Kensington’s latest antiquities sale.