Auctions

US: THE Isle of Wight is seen at lower right in the map illustrated here, which is part of the first large-scale geological map of any country ever issued, Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales, with Part of Scotland... by William Smith.

FRANCE: FRENCH auction law reform has suffered another delay because of bureaucracy, with no sales by foreign auction houses now likely before the autumn.

UK: ILLUSTRATED here are just three lots from the remainder of the Sotheby’s Travel sale, representing polar voyages, English topography and Middle Eastern costume.

BELGIUM: E. Hébert’s dynamic late 19th century patinated bronze group of Two Boxers landed BFr190,000 (£3060) at Amberes in Antwerp on February 5.

UK: THE 105-lot furniture section harboured all the best prices in the first of Maxwells, Wilmslow, quarterly Antiques and Collectors Items auctions of the year.

UK: ONE of 50 coloured illustrations from Alexandre Iacovleff’s Dessins et Peintures d’Afrique of 1927, which sold for £800. One of 100 copies, it comprised a text volume in leather-backed satin covers painted with an African design and a pigskin portfolio containing the loose plates.

FRANCE: A SET of 56 folio engraved plates by the Renaissance draughtsman and engraver Jacques Androuet du Cerceau (Paris c.1560), showing various Renaissance furniture designs ranging from buffets and tables to wardrobes and beds, below right, tripled hopes on Fr70,000 (£6800) in Chartres on January 21.

UK: THAT pedestal partners’ desks have become the most in-demand of writing furniture has been obvious for some time – their rise has been matched by the decline of computer-incompatible davenports – but even so this mid-19th century example, offered at the Abergavenny rooms of J. Straker, Chadwick & Sons (6 per cent buyer’s premium) on February 9 achieved a notable price.

Bond Movie Memorabilia UK: IT WAS hardly surprising that Ursula Andress’s bikini, as worn in the memorable scene when she emerges from the sea in Dr No, should capture so much of the pre- and post-sale publicity for Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10 per cent buyer’s premium) second auction devoted entirely to James Bond memorabilia.

UK: THE Leominster auctioneers heralded the return of “big, brown and broad” furniture when a number of large and somewhat cumbersome pieces saw strong prices and fierce bidding.

UK: WHAT is so extraordinary about a stuffed fish, you might ask? Well, in the annals of piscatoria, they do not come much rarer than this golden roach – taken from the River Frays on October 8, 1911 and offered at Phillips Bayswater on February 20, 2001.

UK: THE copy of T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom offered by Lyon & Turnbull of Edinburgh on February 17 was one of the 170 or so signed, “complete” copies of the privately printed, subscribers’ edition of 1926 and in the original brown morocco binding, illustrated here.

UK: GETTING on for 100 lots in the Phillips sale of February 16 comprised books from one private English collection that were characterised by smart and expensive bindings. Job lots were common but I have illustrated one lot that contained just two books, on a related theme and in matching bindings, and have picked out a few others that presented only one or two of the more valuable books each, but which were unfortunately not to be found among the composite illustrations used in the catalogue.

UK: THE FIRST Phillips sale of the year gets a largely pictorial treatment here, but not everything that I selected for report was illustrated in the catalogue and a number of other highlights are described elsewhere (see "Job lots with a difference", above).

UK: SUCH has been the surge in popularity of English samplers and related textiles over the past few years (driven largely by American collectors who can no longer afford their own folk art) that any picture with even a hint of natural fibre is guaranteed to attract interest at auction.

UK: ALREADY the king of the bottles and jugs collectables market which he has done so much to pioneer, Alan Blakeman’s latest successful sale of advertising collectables where some 410 lots totalled £44,651 has persuaded him to add an extra such event to the two specialist sales a year he has previously held at his South Yorkshire rooms.

UK: ONE of the scarcer plate collections in the Phillips sale was Via Crucis, novellamente eretta nell’ Atrio del Santissimo Crocifisso della chiesa parochiale, e collegiata di S.Polo. Engraved throughout, this small quarto Venetian volume of c.1780 comprises 16 full-page illustrations of the Stations of the Cross by Leonardis after Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, plus 29 pages of text.

UK: LONDON was far from bereft of carpet auctions in January and February with all the major salerooms holding auctions.

UK: THE hottest property in Dreweatt Neate’s, Newbury, January auction of ceramic and glass, was late 19th century decorative porcelain. “You cannot have enough late 19th century in your sales these days,” said specialist Geoffrey Stafford Charles. Strong prices were paid for Mason’s ironstone and Oriental porcelain of this period, but a turn-of-the-century Coalport blue ground part dessert service took the biggest money.

UK: A CLUSTER of four-figure furniture entries at Brighton saw the biggest price reserved for a set of eight Regency mahogany dining chairs.