Auctions

THE first slice of the Longridge collection of early British pottery and European vernacular works of art, formed over 30 years by American Syd Levethan, was sold in two sessions for £2.93m by Christie's in King Street on June 10-11.

THE latest Russian art sales in the capital saw the continuing recovery of an important sector for London’s auctioneers. The market may lack the free spending seen before the downturn in October 2008 but the June sales were significantly up on the equivalent series last year.

BEIJING auctioneers Poly established a new milestone for Chinese art on June 3 selling a 38ft (15m) long calligraphic hand scroll by a Song Dynasty master for RMB390m ($57.4m) plus 12 per cent buyer's premium.

WITH the retreat from Dunkirk so much in the news at the moment, Aguttes have a particularly topical offering in their June 18 sale of manuscripts, postcards and historical documents.

This jewelled and gold mounted hardstone model of a turkey by Fabergé was among the highlights of Christie's Russian art sale in London on June 8.

PRIMARY source material relating to the last days of Napoleon’s life has emerged at a charity valuation event in New Zealand and will be offered for sale on June 29. The consignment of more than 40 items includes a lock of Napoleon’s hair and a sketch of the former emperor on his deathbed drawn from life.

THIS Regency mahogany Carlton House desk, embellished with barber's pole stringing and marquetry fleur-de-lys medallions, was consigned for sale at Moore Allen & Innocent of Cirencester and attracted seven phone lines and others in the room.

SOMETHING for the dealer with almost everything, a personalised car registration plate with the legend ANT IK is being sold later this month.

SETTING the highest price ever seen at auction for Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), this lifesize sculpture of a mother and child, overshot its £60,000-80,000 estimate at Sotheby's latest sale of Modern British art in London before being knocked down to a private buyer at £120,000.

ANGELIC rosy-cheeked village girls were George Clausen’s (1852-1944) staple subject matter. During his time living in the Berkshire village of Cookham Dean, Clausen was particularly preoccupied with this idyllic rural subject matter and, from around 1889, he began to make a series of studies and paintings of a local child, Rose Grimsdale.

THE original autograph stock book of Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, found in a box of girlie magazines, sold for £25,000 (plus 17% buyer's premium) at the Shropshire auctioneers Mullock's in Ludlow.

MOST Star Wars aficionados are familiar with the story of the Flintshire pensioner who bought 20 Palitoy action figures for 49p each in 1978 and sold them at Stockton-on-Tees toy specialists Vectis for a small fortune in 2003.

CANTERBURY Auction Galleries are to embark on a new sales format that will double the number of fine sales held annually and offer every lot to a potential worldwide audience of Internet bidders.

CONTRIBUTING handsomely to the largest grossing sale ever conducted by a regional auctioneer, this 7in (18cm) high Chinese Imperial white jade bell sold for £2m hammer at Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury on May 19 – the first day of a two-catalogue Asian art sale.

WHAT is thought to be a long-lost work by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) is at the centre of a legal imbroglio after being offered for auction in France with an estimate of 80-100 euros.

A SPECIAL addition to Christie’s mid-season Old Masters and 19th century art sale in New York on June 9 is what the auctioneers describe as “an exceptional selection of European paintings and sculpture” from the former Salander-O’Reilly Galleries in Manhattan.

• Stoker's great granddaughter puts unique cache up for sale • Collection includes, letters, photos and even table waresA remarkable collection of documents and artefacts relating to the ill-fated British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-13 will be sold by Bamfords of Derby on May 26. The cache of largely unseen material has been entered for sale by the great granddaughter of Edward Archibald McKenzie, a crewman on the expedition supply ship Terra Nova.

There has been a happy ending to the century-long story of a missing pub sign painted in 1899 by Arts and Crafts artist Walter Crane for the Fox and Pelican pub in the Hampshire village of Grayshott.

IF major auctions in New York are anything to go by, then the amount of money being spent on blue-chip pieces of Modern and Contemporary art is now almost back to the level seen before the market crashed 18 months ago.

• Stock book should help rewrite story of leading artistAN overlooked item in a box of magazines sold at auction for a few pounds could help rewrite the story of one of the most sought after of England’s Victorian painters.