Auctions

BY 1780, John Trumbull (1756-1843), a budding young artist from Lebanon, Connecticut who had sketched the Revolutionary War, found himself in grave difficulty.

Melting bidders' hearts in a snow-covered Dorchester, this rare Doulton figure of a little girl cradling a doll proved the star attraction at Duke's sale on February 5-6.

IN Paris the auction year will start in the most spectacular manner with the Yves Saint Laurent/Bergé collection sale on February 23-24. But 2009 holds out promise for the French art market in other areas too.

Prisoner-of-war work is the name given to intricately crafted small objects created from carved bone or wood and straw marquetry by captured French prisoners languishing in the hulks and other jails during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

Remarkable for both their size and their original condition, this pair of Italian console tables c,1760 sold for £28,000 Semley Auctioneers of Shaftesbury in Dorset on January 24.

IT doesn’t happen very often that either Sotheby’s or Christie’s can claim a major sales victory over their rivals, but at the latest Old Masters series in New York one side came out the clear winners.

MEMENTOS of the notorious Kray Twins amassed while they served life sentences in Parkhurst and Broadmoor were offered in some 160 lots at Chiswick Auctions on the evening of January 26.

Fittingly for a man whose career started in the 1930s, last week's sale of the Roger Warner collection at Christie's South Kensington was just like old times.

Today Robert Baden-Powell is best known as the founder of the Boy Scout movement in 1908, but in the Edwardian era his name was synonymous with the Boer War, and specifically the 217 wretched days from October 1899 to May 1900.

Among the highlights at the most recent sale conducted by advertising and bottle specialists BBR was this miniature shaft and globe bottle in dark olive green glass vessel probably used for pharmaceutical purposes c.1660-70.

The death last year aged 98 of Roger Warner brought to a close the long career of one of the last old school eclectic but knowledgeable country dealers.

A rare set of three graduated Plymouth baluster-shaped hard paste porcelain mugs, c.1768-70, were offered at Mellors & Kirk of Nottingham last month.

AT points, the catalogue of items from the Vaughan family collection sounded like the script for ‘Monty Python and The Holy Grail’.

BONHAMS’ latest silver auction was another sale of two parts. Around a third of it was devoted entirely to one specialist collecting field, early spoons, the bulk from one vendor, Mr Britton Smith.

It took them over a week, but Bonhams have now been able to announce a new record for a piece of 19th century furniture achieved. The new high was achieved when this French ormolu, lacquer and Brazilian rosewood cabinet imitating the shape of a Japanese shodana realised a mighty £1.8m.

A Borders property provided Thomson Roddick (15% buyer's premium) with a sensational discovery for their sale in Rosewell, Edinburgh on December 4.

A FAMILY feud has led to yet another cancellation of the sale of 63 works of art by Oskar Schlemmer, one of the central figures of the Bauhaus.

The Chinese ceramics and works of art market is undergoing a price readjustment after a decade of unfettered growth, a trend highlighted at the latest Asian sales series staged at Christie's Hong Kong.

Fifty-six works from the Vaughan family estate of Hengwrt, Nannau and Rug in Merionethshire, many of which have been in The Welsh Museum, Cardiff following the sale of the house several years ago, were dispersed without reserve by Tamlyn's of Bridgwater, Somerset, on December 9.

The 17th century Wittelsbach diamond was bought for £14.6m (plus premium) by dealer Laurence Graff at Christie’s on December 10, beating the previous auction record – the $16.5m paid for a 100 carat rock at Sotheby’s Geneva in 1995.