Auctions

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period September 18-25, 2019. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Coloured diamonds aside, rubies command higher prices per carat than any other gemstone. Graded using the traditional criteria of the four Cs (colour, cut, clarity and carat weight), they are also evaluated on the basis of geographic origin with the stones from Burma commanding the most interest.

This Arts & Crafts-style necklace, alternating moonstone and chalcedony cabochons set in scrolling silver mounts, is the unmistakable work of the London jeweller Sybil Dunlop (1889-1968).

A sale at Gildings in Market Harborough this month included 10 lots from the family of Albert and Nora McGill – influential industrialists credited with a key role in the founding of Russia’s cotton mill industry in the mid-19th century.

Turbulent as politics are today, they have yet to reach the rumbustious heights of a notorious 1826 by-election in Northumberland, memories of which were revisited at Newcastle auction house Anderson & Garland (20% buyer’s premium).

Pair of candlesticks light up auction with surprise result.

Harry Becker (1865-1928) is not well known outside East Anglia but he is much admired both for a skilled grasp of Impressionism and his choice of subject matter.

Before he learnt to paint, Sheffield-born artist Joe Scarborough (b.1938) was a laboratory assistant at Batchelors, the processed food company, then a face worker at the Thorpe Hesley colliery.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales below £2000, including a pen and ink wash by Paul Sandby.

Roy Oxlade (1929- 2014) emerged in the 1950s as one of a distinguished group of painters, including Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff, who studied under David Bomberg at Borough Polytechnic in London.

It is the practice of one US saleroom to publish what are called ‘starting bids’ rather than an estimate range in its catalogues.

Bearing a modest estimate of £50-75 but sold instead at £800 by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (23% buyer’s premium) on September 4 was a copy of 'Women’s Suffrage: a Short History of a Great Movement' (1912) by that renowned campaigner for women’s political rights, Millicent Garrett Fawcett.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

Our weekly selection from salerooms.

Signed by its author to the title-page, a 1939 first of TS Eliot’s 'Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats' sold for £4300 in a Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) auction.

A late Victorian diamond cluster necklet with an estimated total weight of 14.4cts sold in its original fitted case for £10,500 at Richard Winterton (20% buyer’s premium), Lichfield.

The jewellery sale at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury on October 30 includes over 60 engraved gems – both ancient and Neoclassical – from several single-owner collections. A selection of rings is pictured here:

This 21 x 15in (54 x 39cm) watercolour, below, probably depicting the New Julfa quarter of Isfahan, is by the Armenian-Iranian painter Sumbat Kiureghian (1913- 99).

Among the best known of Castellani’s essays in the archaeological revival style is this ‘Etruscan’ gold and glass grapevine pattern necklace.

After the Hartleys (17.5% buyer’s premium) September 4 sale, auctioneer Andrew Hartley admitted: “Furniture did not perform as it was hoped from tiny chinks of daylight discernible in the last few months.”