Auctions

IT was the finest UK collection of antique fishing tackle to come to auction for a decade and it arrived via an unusual route.

THREE bespoke Hardy reels were offered by Holts as part of their shooting sale at Princess Louise House, Hammersmith on March 20.

A TOUCH of spring arrived in Dorchester on April 10-11 where amongst a number of five-figure prices at Duke’s two-day sale was this tiny watercolour of a branch of cherry blossom by the prolific Victorian theorist, critic and artist John Ruskin (1819-1900). Dated 1857, it is displayed here a fraction less than its actual size.

A pair of Dutch library globes by the man regarded as father of western globe making, Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), now rank the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction in Holland.

A companion work to an August Bohm masterpiece has bought a house record to Gloucestershire firm Wotton Auction Rooms.

Two medals awarded to the same man during the Crimean War, but separated for many years in different collections, have been reunited after selling to the same buyer at Smith & Wilde’s March 21 auction of militaria at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

The highlight of the Asia week series of auctions put on by the major salerooms was an impressive early Japanese wood sculpture of Buddha. It set a new auction high for a Japanese work of art when it was hammered down to the Japanese company Mitsukoshi Co Ltd for $12.8m (£6.7m) plus premium in Christie’s sale of Japanese and Korean art on March 18.

This oak architect’s or engineer’s chest is quite possibly a one-off piece made for renowned Liberty & Co. designer Archibald Knox by the Barnstable firm Shapland and Petter.

Vendors at an auction conducted by the former head of Christie's teddy bear and doll department are still waiting to be paid, more than three months after the sale. The parent company has now gone into receivership.

Is the final chapter in the story of Colin Wilson's ‘Giambologna’ monkeys about to be written? Not, it seems, without a twist in the tale.

Pre-war delivery vans advertising commercial brand names have long been the kings of the Dinky collectors’ market. This was reinforced on March 10 when Vectis of Stockton-on-Tees sold the so-called 5th Avenue Collection, which included examples bearing well known and long-forgotten brands.

Summers Place Auctions of Billingshurst, West Sussex, are to host The Glory Of The Garden in aid of St Catherine's Hospice, a Crawley-based charity, on May 16.

“THE high point of my career,” was how auctioneer John Anderson described his most recent sale. He had waited 30 years but finally got the chance to offer the Lionel Jacobson collection at Anderson & Garland on March 11-13.

It was in 1908 that the American entrepreneur Charles Barnes convinced the British Columbia Development Association (BCDA), a London-based investment syndicate, to purchase 6000 acres of land to establish a farming community for British settlers next to the Thompson River.

The 17.9m euro premium-inclusive total generated by Christie’s two-day sale of the ‘hidden’ collection of Charles Gillot in Paris last week may have wildly surpassed the auctioneers’ 5m euro predictions, but the performance of the 476-lot auction nonetheless ran pretty much along predicted lines.

It’s not just the London salerooms that are benefiting from the renewed enthusiasm for Russian works of art. The highlight of the sale conducted by David Lay of Penzance on February 28-29 was this late 19th century silver gilt and cloisonné enamel presentation vodka set.

WHEN bidders turned up at the first Indian Premier League cricket player auction in Mumbai last month, it was an antiques auctioneer from England they found on the rostrum.

A FRAUDSTER has tricked a US auction house into handing over a valuable Japanese artwork by posing as the representative of the buyer, an English dealer. It is thought they targeted the piece after realising that it was worth a great deal more than it sold for.

Two works by big league Impressionists dating from the early years of the movement are in the spotlight this spring.

Eleys Auctions in Boston, Lincolnshire have sold by private treaty 43 personal effects of the legendary World War Two double-amputee pilot Douglas Bader.