Auctions

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.

VANCOUVER auction house Heffel have taken nearly £900,000 in a single online auction, including one painting which sold for more than £250,000.

There’s been plenty of speculation about who might have paid £1.7m plus 17.5 per cent premium for the two recently-rediscovered Fra Angelico (c.1395-1455) panels of Dominican saints at Duke’s of Dorchester on April 19.

For the second time in the space of a week a UK provincial auctioneer was celebrating a million-pound sale of works by one of the world’s most famous artists.

When asked in an interview of 1906 which of his works he valued most, pâte-sur-pâte master Louis Solon responded: “If the whole of my production were doomed to be destroyed, and I was asked to point out a few specimens that, in my estimation, deserved to be spared, it is from the works made at Minton during my last years there that I would unhesitatingly make my selection.”

after months of pre-sale coverage in the media, the two recently rediscovered panels of Dominican saints from Fra Angelico’s celebrated 1438-40 high altarpiece for the Church of San Marco in Florence finally came under the hammer at Duke’s of Dorchester last Thursday, when they fetched £1.7m.

Bonhams have joined the push for Middle Eastern business by announcing the opening of a sales office in Dubai with a first auction scheduled for early November.

The Asian art juggernaut thunders on with little sign of any slowdown in the market. If anything, the pace seems to be intensifying.