Auctions

FRANCE: NOT exactly what you might choose to wear on St Valentine’s Day but this was the array of iron headwear on offer at the Etude Tajan Haute Epoque sale at Drouot on February 14.

Ceramics – The Jack Hacking Collection UK: THE JACK Hacking collection of English ceramics, offered by Phillips’ Bayswater (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) rooms back on January 23, was a less academic, more eclectic property than Norman Stretton’s. But it was not by any means a general collection since it had quite specific areas of interest.

ITALY: NOW that Christie’s numismatic sales have been subsumed into Spink’s they are no longer held in London. However, they offered some very appealing pieces in Rome on December 13 and 14.

London: Back in the 1860s, long before the days of Action Man and GI Joe, what did a young lad do if he wanted a manly miniature role model, a real boy’s toy?

SWITZERLAND: ABOUT 75 people filled the room at the Tkalec sale of Greek and Roman coins on February 19. For collectors of useless information (and aren’t we all?) I can report that the T of Tkalec is not pronounced and that the name is the old Croat equivalent of ‘Weaver’.

UK: THERE is a distinctly nervous look about the Dodo pictured here, as befits a creature staring extinction in the beak. This “Facsimile of [Roelandt] Savery’s picture of the Dodo in the Royal Gallery at Berlin” is a plate from H.E. Strickland & A.G. Melville’s The Dodo and its Kindred; or the History, Affinities and Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire and other Extinct Birds of the islands Mauritius, Rodriguez and Bourbon.

ITALY: ANOTHER Renaissance magnate, the Doge of Venice, Antonio Grimani (1521-23). His (29mm diameter) portrait medal made Li2m (£670).

US: THE Isle of Wight is seen at lower right in the map illustrated here, which is part of the first large-scale geological map of any country ever issued, Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales, with Part of Scotland... by William Smith.

FRANCE: FRENCH auction law reform has suffered another delay because of bureaucracy, with no sales by foreign auction houses now likely before the autumn.

UK: ILLUSTRATED here are just three lots from the remainder of the Sotheby’s Travel sale, representing polar voyages, English topography and Middle Eastern costume.

BELGIUM: E. Hébert’s dynamic late 19th century patinated bronze group of Two Boxers landed BFr190,000 (£3060) at Amberes in Antwerp on February 5.

UK: THE 105-lot furniture section harboured all the best prices in the first of Maxwells, Wilmslow, quarterly Antiques and Collectors Items auctions of the year.

UK: ONE of 50 coloured illustrations from Alexandre Iacovleff’s Dessins et Peintures d’Afrique of 1927, which sold for £800. One of 100 copies, it comprised a text volume in leather-backed satin covers painted with an African design and a pigskin portfolio containing the loose plates.

FRANCE: A SET of 56 folio engraved plates by the Renaissance draughtsman and engraver Jacques Androuet du Cerceau (Paris c.1560), showing various Renaissance furniture designs ranging from buffets and tables to wardrobes and beds, below right, tripled hopes on Fr70,000 (£6800) in Chartres on January 21.

UK: THAT pedestal partners’ desks have become the most in-demand of writing furniture has been obvious for some time – their rise has been matched by the decline of computer-incompatible davenports – but even so this mid-19th century example, offered at the Abergavenny rooms of J. Straker, Chadwick & Sons (6 per cent buyer’s premium) on February 9 achieved a notable price.

Bond Movie Memorabilia UK: IT WAS hardly surprising that Ursula Andress’s bikini, as worn in the memorable scene when she emerges from the sea in Dr No, should capture so much of the pre- and post-sale publicity for Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10 per cent buyer’s premium) second auction devoted entirely to James Bond memorabilia.

UK: THE Leominster auctioneers heralded the return of “big, brown and broad” furniture when a number of large and somewhat cumbersome pieces saw strong prices and fierce bidding.

UK: WHAT is so extraordinary about a stuffed fish, you might ask? Well, in the annals of piscatoria, they do not come much rarer than this golden roach – taken from the River Frays on October 8, 1911 and offered at Phillips Bayswater on February 20, 2001.

UK: THE copy of T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom offered by Lyon & Turnbull of Edinburgh on February 17 was one of the 170 or so signed, “complete” copies of the privately printed, subscribers’ edition of 1926 and in the original brown morocco binding, illustrated here.

UK: GETTING on for 100 lots in the Phillips sale of February 16 comprised books from one private English collection that were characterised by smart and expensive bindings. Job lots were common but I have illustrated one lot that contained just two books, on a related theme and in matching bindings, and have picked out a few others that presented only one or two of the more valuable books each, but which were unfortunately not to be found among the composite illustrations used in the catalogue.