Auctions

Country pursuits like shooting grouse and watching royals traditionally attract wealthy tourists to Scotland at the end of August, and auctioneers have long since taken advantage of this influx.

SOTHEBY’S have announced that they are to move the Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary Art sales they usually hold in December to February.

USA: The highlight of a $1.36m sale of Americana held by Massachusetts auctioneers Skinner in their Bolton rooms on August 12 was this 2ft 4in (71cm) high, 21in (53cm) diameter, Philadelphia cherry-wood bird cage tea table dated c.1760-80, which left its $10,000-15,000 estimate behind as two dealers in the room contested it to no less than $370,000 (£253,425) plus premium.

UK: This 61/4in (16cm) Shelley whisky jug depicting a fox-hunting scene to both sides and emblazoned entitled Watsons Scotch to the short neck was in sufficiently good condition to bring £1700 at BBR’s saleroom.

AS THE Tour de France came to an end, this 1870 Eugène Meyer de Paris Vélocipède sold on its top estimate for £26,000 (plus 15 per cent buyer’s premium) at Brooks’ Summer Vintage sale at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu on July 27.

AUSTRALIA: BACK in the 1980s a local election campaign in a certain southern hemisphere country featured posters with the simple combination of a photo of the opposition candidate above the words GET THIS BASTARD.

UK: A SMALL group of scientific apparatus featured in Phillips’ July 18 horological auction in Bond Street, London and comprised a silver pocket chronometer by Webster and Son of London, hallmarked for 1834, and a 19th century five-inch theodolite signed for Reiss Leibenwerda, each with their custom-made cases.

An early 19th century blue transfer printed oval footed bowl, 11in (29cm) wide, depicting the death of Nelson at Trafalgar in 1805 which sold at The Bristol Auction Rooms on July 25.

UK: THE current fashion for English porcelain may lean towards the earliest pieces of blue and white, but it was not the case 30 years ago when the vendor of this First Period Worcester yellow ground mask jug, c.1760 purchased this piece for £3800 at the Grosvenor House Antiques Fair.

FRANCE: REMBRANDT Bugatti, the sculptor brother from the famous racing car family, has been a major saleroom force for some years and there is no stopping him at the moment to judge by recent sales in Paris.

THE best bottle ever dug? This was the question that auctioneer Alan Blakeman of BBR was asking himself after an extraordinary price was tendered by an American collector at the Elsecar salerooms on July 9 for this early shaft and globe example.

THE golfers who tee-off at St Andrew’s on Thursday might stand a better chance of winning the Open if they forced Tiger Woods to play with this locally made ball, rather than the standard ultra-scientific balata.

UK: PAUL Henry’s A Village in Connemara which sold for £58,000 at Edgar Horns in Eastbourne on July 12. The 16 x 24in (41 x 61cm) oil on canvas is fully signed and still bears an original paper label on the stretcher with title and artist, though the frame is a replacement.

UK: JOHN Russell of Falkirk was a barometer maker to the Prince Regent and, as a result, this mahogany wheel-shaped example with the Prince of Wales feathers commanded considerable interest from leading London dealers at Woolley and Wallis’s Salisbury salerooms on July 4.

THE second week of London’s prestige midsummer sales saw the Modern given way to the traditional with a flurry of exceptional prices for Old Master paintings and drawings and Renaissance works of art.

TO some a relatively run-of-the-mill hot water jug and cover, but to others the inspiration for possibly the most important prose fiction in Britain’s rich literary history.

Back in 1948 a Dublin auctioneer sold the contents of a local property belonging to one Dr Cremins, which included a number of antiques purchased in the early years of the 20th century.

THOUGH it might no longer be the place where an international vendor would choose to sell a £20m Picasso or Van Gogh, London last week enhanced its reputation as a revenue for selling major-name Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art with a string of major results at Sotheby’s and Christie’s evening sales.

UK: CYPHERS can be frustrating things, whether one is using the word to denote a code for secret writing or, as is more often the case in the antiques world, some ingenious arrangement of conjoined initials.

UK: LEADING the auction at £100,000 (plus premium) was this 27in (68.5cm) high early 18th century, two-section Saxon covered goblet from Dresden which is applied with 12 silver-gilt oval medallions of Roman emperors and was discovered in a cellar at Schloss Hinnenburg, in northern Germany.