Auctions

Is this Elkington kettle the earliest provable Christopher Dresser design for electroplated silver?

A sickle-leaf carpet from the William A. Clark collection has set a new auction record for a Persian carpet after selling for $30m (£20.5m) at Sotheby’s New York.

Three men who were responsible for a sophisticated credit card fraud which targeted auction houses across the country have now been sentenced.

The latest series of Russian art auctions in London set a combined hammer total of £42.7m to make it the most lucrative since the market peaked in June 2008.

Warwickshire saleroom Bigwood of Teddington, Stratford-on-Avon sold this mid 19th century whalebone cane for an extraordinary £27,000 at their latest sale.

These tiny Chinese agate carvings jointly estimated at just £200-300 stole the show at Woolley & Wallis’ Asian series when they sold for 500 times the top guide in a packed saleroom in Salisbury.

This tour de force of the Victorian glass craftsman’s art was the highlight of Bonhams’ mixed-owner British and European glass sale.

The latest sealed-bid sale at Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst produced some real surprises – none more so than the Edwardian painted wood and wrought-iron seesaw pictured here.

A pencil drawing by LS Lowry (1887-1976) set an auction record for a work on paper by the artist this week, selling for £175,000.

The latest cameras and photographic equipment auction at Special Auction Services of Greenham, near Newbury included two daguerreotypes by direct descent through the family of Antoine François Jean Claudet (1798-1867), the property of his great-great-great-granddaughter.

Anxious to arrest declining saleroom audiences, Bertoia Auctions in Vineland, New Jersey, chose to axe the buyer’s premium for bidders in the room for their sale on March 16.

Stuttgart auctioneers Nagel achieved a new German auction record for Oriental art when they sold a Yongzheng mark and period wine pot and cover for €2.8m (£2.37m).

It has to go down as one of the great car boot fair finds of all time. On June 26, Christie’s South Kensington will offer for sale this Breitling Top Time wristwatch, worn by Sean Connery in ‘Thunderball’.

The inaugural sale held by new London-based musical instrument auctioneers Ingles & Hayday generated a £2.26m total from 150 lots.

A first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone containing personal annotations and illustrations by author J.K. Rowling’s fetched £150,000 at a charity auction held at Sotheby’s in London last night.

A demand from the National Archives for lots to be withdrawn from auction at Tennants of Leyburn could have wider implications for the trade in historical documents.

Almost exactly a year after Graham Budd set a record for any football programme at auction he has done it again.

Possibly dating from the reign of Louis XIV, this fine boulle casket and stand was among an assortment of jewellery, silver, furniture and pictures at Thomas R. Callan’s sale in Ayr, south west Scotland.

Dreweatts will be conducting the first auction of a complete RHS Chelsea garden during this year’s flower show.

Billed as “the most important early printed book to be offered this century”, a deluxe vellum copy of the ‘Opera’ of Virgil is being offered at Christie’s on June 12.