Auctions

This c.1960s Japanese Robot Rocket Ship made by Modern Toys (Masudaya) will feature in the two-day Basics summer auction to be held by Bertoia on August 22-23.

This clown acrobat of c.1910 is one of around 150 automata from the Michael Kam collection that feature in the Potter & Potter August 24 auction in Chicago.

Aldridges of Bath smashed its house record last week with the sale of a Yongzheng mark and period bowl for £220,000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium). It had come for sale following a routine house call.

Did a watch offered for sale in Carlisle at the end of July once belong to Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)? Two centuries of provenance suggest it did.

Sold in the heartlands of English ceramics, this example, below, of Scotland’s finest was the estimate-shattering star of Potteries Auctions’ (20% buyer’s premium) July 13-14 sale in Stoke-on-Trent.

One the most productive Bauhaus furniture designers was the Hungarian-born Marcel Breuer (1902-81). From 1925-28 he was in charge of the so-called interior workshop at the design school.

There’s no doubt that items from some of the ‘eureka’ moments in Victorian design are falling away from the collecting zeitgeist. The current fashion is undoubtedly towards the creative ideas of the second half of the 20th century.

Pioneering astronomical works which appeared many centuries before the moon landing sell at auction.

An exceptional example of Thai silversmithing has sold for £13,500 (plus 17.5% buyer’s premium) in Leicestershire.

Under forthcoming UK ivory legislation, there will be no legitimate market for bronze and ivory Art Deco figures.

While the vast majority of works at Old Master sales are by European artists, an unusual offering at Bonhams’ sale on July 3 was a Latin American work by a painter with Afro-Caribbean ancestry.