Auctions

“This was the earliest Cup Final programme I’ve ever seen,” said Graham Budd (15% buyer’s premium), referring to lot 747 in his sale on May 9-10 in association with Sotheby’s Olympia.

Hedge funds continue to stake a claim on big-ticket names

Pablo Picasso has become the ultimate luxury brand. On May 3 at Sotheby’s New York Picasso’s rare and iconic 1941 portrait, Dora Maar au chat, became the world’s second most expensive painting when it sold for $85m (£48.3m) to a mystery buyer in the room, widely presumed to be representing a Russian oligarch.

PHILLIPS de Pury & Company are to open a new London saleroom and hold a special Contemporary Art and Design auction on October 14 during the Frieze fair.

It gives some idea as to how furniture connoisseurship has changed that the upholstered high-back chair pictured here could once have been accepted as an original furnishing from the bedroom of Mary Queen of Scots.

All Bank of England banknotes issued prior to the early 1800s are rare but the note, pictured here, dated 30 August 1705, is believed to be the oldest in private hands.

A Bedford woman who was downsizing homes decided to enter this piece of family silver into her local auction house. It proved to be the stellar entry in W&H Peacock’s April 7 antiques sale when, after generating considerable pre-sale attention from the London silver trade, it far outstripped the saleroom’s unpublished expectations of around £3000-5000, selling to one of their number for £28,000 (plus 12.5% premium).

MUSSOLINI’s son-in-law and foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, would have done well to heed the imagery of this black glazed terracotta head when another version of it came into his possession.

The current boom in the market for Chinese Contemporary paintings could hardly be better illustrated than by the way sale statistics have been leapfrogging around the globe in the last couple of weeks.

Works by Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) are only very occasionally seen on the market. So when this evocative watercolour Salt Marsh was offered at Sworders (15% buyer’s premium) sale in Stansted Mountfitchet on April 11 it attracted at least seven interested parties.

CAPTAIN Thomas Bowrey’s principal claim to fame has been as the author of a 1701 English-Malay dictionary. Despite criticism of its clumsy errors, eccentricities of transliteration and quaint dialogues, this remained a standard reference for over 100 years.

The enormous potential of the market for contemporary Chinese art was dramatically underlined by almost frenzied scenes at Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) eagerly awaited March 31 Contemporary Art Asia sale in New York.

Whether it was the result of quiet, pious reflection, plentiful practice, or simply the bonds between close friends, the samplers produced by the girls of Ackworth School in West Yorkshire developed a distinct individual style.

As ATG went to press, the best-selling work of art in last week’s series of Islamic sales in London was this impressive 16in (40cm) diameter blue and white Iznik pottery dish, right, offered at Christie’s on April 4.

In last week’s ATG we revealed how a sketchily catalogued box of over 130 19th century photographs estimated at £80-120 in a Cumbrian auction house proved to be a cache of images made by the early daguerreotype process and ended up selling to Ken Jacobson for £75,000.

There was high drama at Lyon and Turnbull’s Edinburgh saleroom on March 26 when this celadon moonflask, left, estimated at £2000-3000, shot to a house record £275,000 (plus 19.5/12% buyer’s premium).

Before embarking on his 1907-09 expedition to the Antarctic, Ernest Shackleton sent Ernest Joyce and Frank Wild on a crash course in printing and had a press and associated materials loaded onto the Nimrod.

Following its recent discovery by a metal detectorist in the south of England, one of Britain’s rarest medieval coins is to be sold by London numismatists Spink.

"Lot 132. A 19th century mahogany box containing a quantity of 19th century photographs: 15 small images of stonework on metal, 50 images of buildings on metal, 70 small images of buildings on metal and 14 of buildings on card. Box poor condition, many images poor condition."

When Buckingham auctioneer John Dickins sold an ebony mantel clock by the pioneering British designer C.F.A. Voysey in September 2004 for £72,000 (see ATG No 1658, October 2, 2004) he was naturally delighted. These highly desirable icons of arts and crafts horology are very scarce (only half a dozen in aluminium, oak or painted oak had been recorded at that point) so a new addition to the canon was noteworthy.