Auctions

UK: A pair of gilt and cedarwood girandoles in the neoclassical manner, 5ft 9in high by 3ft wide (1.75m x 91cm), from the contents of Barnby Moor House, near Retford offered by Neales of Nottingham on February 24.

UK: THE Arts and Crafts movement in Scotland and England has been well documented both in commercial salerooms and academic exhibitions, and indeed the value of work designed by the likes of William Morris and Robert Lorimar has never been more popular.<b

AUSTRIA: THE ENTRY of Jörg Haider's far-right Freedom Party into the Austrian government could have repercussions for the country's art market, warns Otto Hans Ressler, director of Austria's second-largest auction firm Wiener Kunst.

UK: The factors which make for a desirable cased fish are four-fold: the case (bowfronts are most popular), the label of a good taxidermist such as Cooper, condition and (as the joker in the pack) the beast itself.

UK: HAVING ascribed it to the Italian School of the 13th/14th century in their auction advertisement, Hy. Duke now believe that this 73/4 x 9in (20 x 23cm) oil on panel, right, is in fact the pinnacle – missing for 150 years – of the Madonna panel by Nardo Di Cione (1343-1366).

From a Ligurian Spring by Henry Herbert Lathangue (1859-1929) sold for £330,000 plus 15 per cent premium at Bearne’s Spring Seasonal Sale, Exeter on March 1.

UK: This pair of 8ft 2in (2.5m) high polished steel gates inset with Lalique glass segments were bid to £13,000 at Christie's South Kensington on February 9.

FRANCE: THE French auction law reform bill had its second reading in the Senate on February 23 and, according to National President Gérard Champin, “90 per cent of the text has now been approved”.

UK: EVERY so often a dealer will acquire an object of academic interest for relatively little money and put it into an auction to see how much it will make.

UK: A HIGHLY important painting by the early Italian master Cimabue (c.1240-1302) has been discovered by Sotheby's at Benacre Hall, near Lowestoft, Suffolk, home of the reclusive Sir John Gooch, 12th Bt., who died last year.

UK: While the art market has been quieter in the provincial salerooms since the New Year, an exception was provided by this oil on canvas View of Venice at the Entrance to the Grand Canal, which appeared at Lawrence's of Crewkerne on February 17.

This simple 91/2in (24cm) diameter pottery 'souvenir' plate, made in Llanelly c.1910 and decorated with Welsh folk heroine Mari Jones in the manner of the factory's most famous painter, Samuel Shufflebotham, sold to a Pembrokeshire collector at £1700 (plus 15 per cent premium) at the Carmarthen rooms of Peter Francis on January 25.

FRANCE: THANKS in part to the Chateau de Groussay sale staged jointly with Sotheby's, Poulain-Le Fur moved ahead of Piasa in 1999 to rank second in Paris with sales of Fr285m (£27.5m).

ELABORATE multi-figure conversation pieces are amongst the most sought-after classes of silhouette.

EIRE: ONE of a number of remarkable prices achieved at James Adam & Bonhams' Irish Art sale on December 8 was the record IR£50,000 (£41,665) given for Harry Kernoff's 1936 oil of a Dublin cab.

US: SETTING a new world auction record for a decoy, this sleeping Canada Goose c.1917, by renowned carver Elmer Crowell of East Harwich, Massachusetts, was estimated at $400,000-500,000 by Sotheby's, New York in a joint sale with Guyette and Schmidt of Maine, but sold to Boston dealer Stephen B. O'Brien Jr in the room on behalf of a client at $620,000 (£375,760) plus premium on January 23.

UK: THE north Indian Agra carpet that topped Christie's South Kensington's two-day sale of the contents of Le Bois Muralt on January 18–19 at £66,000.

UK: Christie's South Kensington chalked up their highest ever London sale total last week when they raised £2.25m net for the contents of a Swiss summer residence, Le Bois Muralt, on January 18-19.

UK: LARGELY ignored by the English and Continental trade at Phillips' Edinburgh sale, this 17th century ivory figure of an unknown Dutchman was so desired by two competing Scottish dealers that it brought £11,500 against a £2000 top estimate.

UK: THE Early Edison tinfoil phonograph which topped Christie's South Kensington's December 16 mechanical music and technical sale at £28,000.