Auctions

The sale at The Auction Centre (20% buyer’s premium) in Runcorn, Cheshire, on September 30 included this rare George III Scottish silver member’s badge for The Edinburgh Skating Club – the world’s first figure skating organisation.

A number of pictures from another single-owner collection caught the eye at Dreweatts a month earlier than the Flaxley Abbey auction.

The creative roots of this 22in (56cm) bronze figure, which was one of the highlights at Nusser (22.69% buyer’s premium), date back to the pre-war years.

The growing interest in inter- and post-war works by Vietnamese artists - particularly those alumni of the Ecole des Beaux Arts d’Indo-Chine - means that France, as a former colonial power in the region, is well supplied with examples.

Translation was first time a major poem of antiquity appeared in an English language form.

Auction firm Art Research Paris will be offering two paintings by the Paris school Chinese-French artist Sanyu (1895-1966).

Since 1969, when it was sold at a gallery exhibition in Munich, one of Niki de Saint Phalle’s (1930-2002) well-known Nanas had belonged to a south German collector.

The complex and sometimes bizarre machines that the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (1925-91) constructed during his long career belong to the most distinctive examples of kinetic art.

Among the potential highlights in Aguttes’ Contemporary Art auction in Neuilly on November 2 will be this work by Pierre Soulages (b.1919), 30 mai 1981.

Among the most desirable of all ‘Prattware’ transfer printed wares are the series of very rare and highly decorative advertising plaques produced for firms such as Crosse & Blackwell and Huntley & Palmers.

The central motif of Antoni Tàpies’ (1923- 2012) Personnage assis (Variation XI) has been the subject of many discussions among art historians.

Naive artworks that can also suit modern decorating taste are rising in popularity and price.

Bid to £3400, a 1703 first edition of Martin Martin’s Description of the Western Islands of Scotland in a later full calf binding proved the most expensive item in the 250-lot book and ephemera section that opened an October 5-7 auction at Stride & Son (18% buyer’s premium).

Watercolour given as thanks to his Heinz family host in 2003 now sells to a US collector.

Glasgow School designer’s embroidered silk design instantly stood out in a box of fabric.

Often from poor communities and mostly illiterate, men were limited in the ways in which they could plight their troth in 18th and 19th century Wales.

Coin dealer Patrick Deane first became interested in 17th and 18th century trade tokens in 1970 when working at Spink and Son. He sold his first collection of around 1250 pieces in 1984.

The Danish artist Hugo Vilfred Pedersen (1870-1959) studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen but afterwards spent 12 years travelling around Asia.

The Austrian artist and composer Hermann Nitsch, who died earlier this year at the age of 84, had as many detractors as followers.

A third sale featuring ceramics by Jean Cocteau took place in Bonhams Cornette de Saint Cyr’s (27.5%/26/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) Paris saleroom.