Auctions

The Art & Design post 1880 sale at Duke’s in Dorchester on April 25 included 44 lots of William De Morgan tiles consigned by descendants of Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), Earl of Balfour and prime minister from 1902-05. He is understood to have bought them directly from De Morgan in Fulham.

Our selection of lots from 13 upcoming aauctions

An auction of traditional European decorative arts at Sotheby’s New York (20/10% buyer’s premium) on April 16 included this New Zealand Arts & Crafts presentation casket.

Jeremy Knight, a book collector and the former curator of Horsham Museum and Art Gallery, believes he has purchased an artwork that is “the earliest-known illustration of a black person on an English sampler”.

The first auctions of the year at Summers Place Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) in Billingshurst – a live event on March 26 and a sealed bids sale on March 27 – included this pair of rare Portland stone groups of a nymph and satyr by Charles Sargeant Jagger (1885-1934).

ATG’s pick of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com, featuring both the highest prices over-estimate and the top prices paid online.

Nelson and Napoleon are just two of the historical figures to have collecting markets devoted to themselves. Another is Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965).

The March 14 sale at Willow Auction House (25% buyer’s premium) in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, included a New York private collection of leaded and stained-glass panels.

The furniture highlight of Cheffins’ (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) latest Fine sale in Cambridge was the catalogue cover star.

Found in a country house in Gloucestershire, this letter written by Lord Byron (1788-1824) to Major John Cartwright (1740-1824) sold for £6000 at Chorley’s (28.2% buyer’s premium inc VAT) on March 20.

A Copeland vase produced to mark 100 years of American Independence was among the highlights of the second tranche of the Flower collection of majolica.

Abell’s (25% buyer’s premium) sale in Los Angeles on April 17 included a spectacular Art Nouveau vase from the workshop of French ceramicist Clement Massier.

The stand-out performance in the March series of Asian art sales was a Qing monochrome clair-de-lune bottle vase offered by Freeman’s Hindman (26% buyer’s premium) in Chicago on March 24.

Turtle soup, which first became a delicacy on European tables with the emergence of the West Indies trade in the 18th century, was hugely popular among the elite of American society at the turn of the 20th century.