Auctions

Sworders’ Spring Country House sale in Stansted Mountfitchet on April 24 included a remarkable collection of pieces designed by Augustus Pugin for his own Ramsgate home.

An album containing over 200 photographs belonging to Flight Lieutenant Herbert Carmichael “Bird” Irwin (1894-1930), captain of the airship R101, is to be offered for sale at Netherhampton Salerooms in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on May 16.

The latest round of Impressionist and Modern art sales in New York will forever be remembered as ‘The Scream’ series.

This silver inkstand made by William Robb of Ballater, assayed in Edinburgh in 1910, is one of ten items by the silversmith to be included at Batemans sale on May 5 in Stamford, Lincolnshire.

Wind in the Willows characters Mole, Ratty and Toad are to go under the hammer at Michael Bowman of Newton Abbot in Devon on May 5.

Bids in the region of £1000-1500 are expected at Plymouth Auction Rooms on May 9 for this Eureka four-glass electric clock.

At their May 9-10 sale, Stroud Auction Rooms in Gloucestershire will include over 200 lots of weights and scales from a single collection.

IF pearls reached the peak of their popularity in antiquity, when the Roman general Vitellius is said to have financed an entire military campaign by selling just one of his mother’s pearl earrings, then the market in 2012 does not rest too far behind.

A rare Märklin ‘first series’ tinplate toy ’HMS Terrible’ was the jewel in the Ron McCrindell collection sold by Special Auction Services of Greenham, near Newbury, on April 20.

STUDENTS from West Dean College near Chichester will offer their work at auction to raise funds to supplement the college’s bursary and scholarship schemes.

BALDWIN’S are to sell the most complete collection of British gold sovereigns, formed over 34 years, with the first tranche being offered on May 8 in London.

THE first corkscrew model designed by Robert Jones and Son of Cheapside, Birmingham in 1840, distinctive for a narrow barrel and a single spike, can usually be bought for around £1000.

IT was a case of ‘last but not least’ at Bonhams’ latest prints sale in New Bond Street.

A UNIQUE Falklands War medal marking the ‘phenomenally brave’ work of a bomb disposal expert has sold for what is believed to be a record price at auction.

IT was the five o’clock shadow that gave it away. When London dealer Philip Mould spotted this 18th century portrait in a general paintings sale at the New York auctioneers Thomas Cornell Galleries in November last year, he thought it to be of a rather masculine middle-aged lady.

JUBILEE Antiques & Art Auction will become the first Chinese auction house to conduct sales in the West when they hold an auction of Asian works of art at the Bloomsbury Hotel on May 12.

SOTHEBY’S concluded their latest Hong Kong series of sales on April 4, raising a premium-inclusive total of over HK$2.46bn (£212.5m) for the eight sales containing over 2780 lots.

ENTERED for sale by a descendent of the family for whom it was made, this carved wood and painted plaster model of an East End butcher’s shop sold for £22,000 at Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury.

BY the early decades of the 19th century it was clear that the ancient and cosmopolitan game of chess would require pieces of standardised size and shape as it entered the era of international competition.

WHILE London auctions saw a 25% rise in value for 2011, sales outside the capital have also been growing.