Auctions

THE latest sales of Contemporary art in New York produced some solid results, but buyers were selective and not all the projected highlights fulfilled vendors’ expectations.

IN a series of high-profile auctions in New York that saw an underperforming run of Impressionist and Modern art sales, the eye-catching price of the week by some distance came for a 19th century historical genre painting.

"The best piece of furniture sold in Shropshire in a decade," enthused Shrewsbury auctioneer Jeremy Lamond of Halls.

SOTHEBY'S will sell the earliest rules of club football on July 14. They are part of a lot which includes the historic archive of the world’s oldest football club, Sheffield FC.

Tennants sale in Leyburn on March 24-26 enjoyed a substantial contribution from George Tinworth (1843-1913) and his wonderful anthropomorphic mice.

BACK in the 1980s, on the back of the Lalique boom, there used to be fairly regular offerings of scent bottles at auction in London.

THEY may look plain and simple, but this pair of silver wall-hanging candle scones had private and trade bidders clamouring to buy when they came up for sale last week at Colchester auction rooms Reeman Dansie.

HALLMARKS on new items made of precious metal may be scrapped under a Government bid to reduce red tape.

ISLAMIC art dominated the London sales agenda last week with the first of the two bi-annual series of auctions devoted to this field in the capital.

THE London Islamic sales week got of to a ‘magic carpet’ start when Morton and Eden held an 81-lot sale devoted to the rarest Islamic coins.

THE mammoth, 875-lot, three-day sale from the collections of the Château de Gourdon staged by Christie's in Paris closed last week closed having raised a hammer total of €35.1m (£31.9m).

AMONG the 30,000 papers released by the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust earlier this month – and now available to the public at the Churchill Archive Centre – is a brief note on antiques fairs.

TWO William Burges windows that surfaced at auction in Salisbury last year have been sold back to the house for which they were originally made.

CHINA’s fourth largest auction house, the Beijing Council International Auction Company, have opened an office in the US with the aim of sourcing material to sell in mainland China.

ONE of the rarer acts of peace-time bravery saw the crew of the airship R33 awarded the Air Force Medal.They included George Ernest Long, whose medals and associated ephemera came up for auction at Lockdales of Ipswich on March 27.

THE 16-lot section devoted to Martin Brothers art pottery at Bonhams' latest Ceramic Design sale provided a number of the notable results.

ON visiting a bungalow just south of Knutsford for a probate valuation, Patrick Cheyne had been dismayed to find nothing of any value in the home itself – but rather better things emerged when he was shown the garage.

A ROW has erupted after another attempt by South American interests to intervene in a tribal art sale in Paris.

THE highlight of the two-day sale conducted by Rosebery's of West Norwood, London on March 15-16 was this unsigned lantern clock, left, consigned 'in the rough' by a private vendor.

THE large sums of money currently paid for the very top works by leading South African artists was seen once again at Bonhams’ latest sale in this category.