Auctions

A MASSIVE Queen Anne cistern, which set a new auction high for English silver when it sold for £2.2m in 2010, is now on display at the Tudor mansion Temple Newsam in Leeds after it was acquired for the nation.

THE final lot of 233 offered at Michael Bowman's latest sale at the Chudleigh Town Hall, Devon was this limewood carving of a goose wing attributed to the Anglo-German artist Sir Hubert von Herkomer (1849-1914).

Prints by Edward Wadsworth (1889-1949) are not a common sight on the market, but the Yorkshire-born artist who became a leading exponent of Vorticism was a prominent printmaker in the early stage of his career.

A KENT auction house has withdrawn a sacred Aboriginal artefact from sale after intervention from cultural experts and the Australian High Commission.

KANGXI and Qing dynasty rhinoceros horn libation cups feature regularly at UK sales devoted to Asian works of art, but this 18th century example appeared for sale at Cottone's of Geneseo in upstate New York.

A SILVER medal awarded to the Master of Admiral Lord Nelson's flagship HMS Victory, who was at the ship's helm throughout the Battle of Trafalgar is to be sold by Nantwich, Cheshire, auctioneers Peter Wilson.

A GOLD button which links the two most significant military figures in the foundation of the United States of America – George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette – will be sold in Leicestershire on November 1.

THIS rare-to-the-market 1913 Dieppe painting by Camden Town Group painter Charles Ginner (1878-1952) was recently rediscovered in an important Canadian collection.

THE history of France’s famous Sleeper Car Company was commemorated in a single-owner sale at Christie’s in Paris last month.

IN what promises to be the biggest test of the overall health of the Victorian picture market for some years, Lyon & Turnbull will sell the entire contents of Old Battersea House, the London home of the Forbes family, in Edinburgh on November 1.

THE existence of the elephant – “nature’s great masterpiece... the only harmless great thing”, to use John Donne’s famous description – was well known to medieval Europeans, but captive pachyderms had disappeared from the continent shortly after the demise of the Roman Empire.

MADE by James A. Miller and Brother of Chicago to a design of c.1898, Frank Lloyd Wright’s 18in (45cm) high spherical copper urn worked with repoussé panels of interlocking geometric decoration, shown here, has become an icon of the American Arts & Crafts movement.

As ever, there was a large amount of Doulton Lambeth on offer at Bonhams’ latest Ceramics Design sale.

Modern British art played its part in the recent London print sales when ‘The Merry-Go-Round’ by Cyril Power (1872-1951) drew strong bidding at Sotheby’s on September 27 and ‘Adonis in Y fronts’, a 1963 screenprint by Richard Hamilton (1922-2011), led the day at Christie’s South Kensington on September 20.

Becoming the most expensive painting ever sold in Ireland, A Fair Day, Mayo by Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957) was knocked down at €1m (£917,430) at Adam's lastest sale in Dublin.

THE thwack of the polo mallet was replaced by the repeated thud of the gavel earlier this month at the Cowdray estate in West Sussex, celebrated as one of the great British polo venues and the seat of the Viscount Cowdray.

ON a sparkling evening at Sotheby’s in Bond Street last Thursday, Henry Wyndham presided over a charity auction in aid of the Company of Arts Scholars, Dealers and Collectors’ charity fund, raising over £60,000 to support the education of young people seeking careers in all areas of the decorative arts from dealing and auctioneering to museums and galleries.

Lowestoft porcelain specialist and Suffolk auctioneer Russell Sprake is marking 50 years in the auction business this month with perhaps his finest ever sale.

AUCTIONEERS Martel Maides of St Peter Port in Guernsey were amazed to encounter this Channel Islands silver table bell in a recent over-the-counter valuation.

THE largest 'Conjuring' sale seen in London for some time, at Bloomsbury Auctions on September 8, had at its core the 460-lot collection of the late Bob Read, a 'Close-Up Entertainer' and lecturer in the UK and USA who was a tireless researcher into the history of magic and conjuring.