Auctions

THE artist may not have a famous name or any track record in the saleroom, but arguably the most intriguing lot at Rogers Jones' latest Welsh Sale in Colwyn Bay was a collection of 50 striking Art Deco watercolours by Gladys Williamson (1914-2007).

A REMARKABLE collection of 70 early toasters from one private collection will be offered by Brown & Co at the Brigg Auction Rooms, North Lincolnshire as part of their winter fine art and antiques sale on December 12.

EARLY 17th century embroidery is a fairly rare beast, but it does surface occasionally.

SOTHEBY’S staged a white-glove sale in London last week as 50 works from the collection of Lord and Lady Attenborough all found buyers.

ITALIAN auctioneers Finarte have announced that they will no longer make their auction results public because of complaints from both consignors and buyers.

HAS the top end of the art market bounced back? This was the opinion ventured by some commentators after the flagship sales of Impressionist and Modern art in New York last week.

JUST as Asian Art in London got underway, a surprise regional highlight emerged in Devon. A pair of 18th century Chinese Export pheasants were consigned for sale at Plymouth Auction Rooms by a local vendor, whose family had owned the birds for at least three generations.

ON December 9, Morton and Eden are to offer what is possibly the most important collection of Renaissance medals to come onto the market in decades.

Politically correct it is not, but the ‘Negro Cricketer’ pattern, produced for just one year in 1907, certainly ranks among the rarest and most desirable of Royal Doulton series wares.

ESTIMATED at £800-1200, this Victorian silver ewer modelled as a kangaroo sold for £24,000 at Chorley's of Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire on October 22 to a London dealer on the telephone who saw off competition from Australia and France.

GUERNSEY auctioneers Martel Maides look set to become the latest UK regional firm to benefit from the rise and rise of Chinese mark and period porcelain after three Yongzheng period (1723-1735) famille rose bowls were consigned by a Channel Islands family who have owned them for at least 80 years.

A MASSIVE Union Flag that flew from one of the ships at the battle of Trafalagar has sold at auction for £320,000.

THE original drawings that Edward Lear made for his 1846 A Book of Nonsense are now rare, and those that exist are for the most part held in institutional collections.

ATG columnist Richard Falkiner has hailed the Roman cameo glass vase which has been unveiled by Bonhams as “the greatest classical find since the Portland Vase”.

IS there still life in the Irish art market? The auction record for a piece of sculpture by an Irish artist was broken at Adam's 140-lot sale of Irish art on October 14.

It was Moorcroft’s take on flambé glazes that produced the highest price at Bonhams’ latest Ceramic Design sale.

AMONG the more run-of-the-mill furnishings that constitute the bulk of the popular Interiors sales at Christie’s South Kensington, there are often a handful of more quirky items.

FROM May 1913, the first distinctive Commonwealth of Australia banknotes were issued. They were controversial in that no portrait of the reigning monarch, George V, was included in the design.

METASTASIS, to most people, is a word with rather grim connotations – referring as it does to the spread of cancer. Applied to a set of playing cards, however, it has an altogether different and more attractive meaning.

THE first Conspicuous Gallantry Cross group to appear at auction also became the highest-priced lot to sell via ATG's live bidding platform the-saleroom.com when it was hammered down for £88,000 at Dix Noonan Webb on September 18.