Auctions

FREQUENTLY, the most interesting object in someone’s garage is not the car.

France’s share of the global auction market fell by 5.8 per cent in 2006, warns the Conseil des Ventes, the national auction watchdog, in its annual report published on June 25. Worldwide auction activity, it says, rose 34 per cent over the same period.

The date of 1623 puts this timekeeper firmly in the first years of production of what has come to be known as the English lantern clock.

In 1914, Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970) was living in Cornwall and enjoying the most fertile period of her career.

On June 12, John Still, a private collector from Edinburgh, walked along a deserted Bond Street to arrive at the doors of the Fine Art Society at 6am, just a minute ahead of a second enthusiastic collector.

IT’S not often that eight sheets of paper bring out eight telephone bidders, but that was the case at Mallams’ sale in Oxford on June 8. Yet these were no ordinary scraps. They were, in fact, important pieces of architectural history.

JAMES Podger is to close his Great Grooms antiques centre at Dorking and concentrate all his efforts and resources on consolidating his Great Grooms centre at Hungerford, Berkshire.

Just a month after their most successful sale ever, thanks to the consignment of an archive of Francis Bacon’s work, Woking auctioneers Ewbank’s have won another Bacon collection.

NEW auctioneers Aqueduct Auctions are holding their first sale on Saturday, June 16 at the Methodist Chapel, Froncysyllte, near Llangollen.

FOR more than a decade, Dorset saleroom Cottees have held biannual sales dedicated to Poole pottery. The most latest event had the sad distinction of being the first since the closure of the Poole Pottery just before Christmas.

The highlight of the Oriental sale conducted by Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis on May 22 was this underglaze copper-red Qianlong (1736-1795) mark and period moonflask standing 11in (27cm) high.

Not one but two international auction houses conducted sales series in Hong Kong in May.

Despite riding the crest of a wave of popularity, Theodore Roosevelt declined to run again for the presidency in 1908. Instead he anointed William Howard Taft as his successor and famously embarked upon a year of big game hunting in Africa.

BLOOMSBURY Auctions are launching a new saleroom in New York.

Munich auctioneers Hermann Historica are known internationally as experts for arms and armour, medals and historical collectibles rather than tribal art, so they were on unfamiliar territory with lot 3324 in their latest blockbuster sale held from May 2 to 11.

It was a more traditional 20th century picture that established a new house record for Chichester auctioneers Stride & Son on April 27.

Art Deco bronze and ivory dancers inspired by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and other exotic themes have been racing up the price scale in recent months. The reason is rouble power.

Imperial Chinese ceramics and works of art are at the centre of a raging bull market. Auction prices have skyrocketed thanks to fierce competition between Western dealers, collectors and a large body of Asian buyers, many Chinese mainlanders amongst them. With the major Spring sales in China staged during a six-week period from mid-May to early July, ATG brings you a timely lowdown on the auction scenes in Beijing and Shanghai.

Change in the collecting geography at New York’s Imp & Mod spring sales

Cambridgeshire saleroom Grounds & Co has changed its name to Clifford Cross Auctions.