Auctions

EXCITING plenty of bidding against its £500-800 estimate at Ely-based saleroom Rowley's was this rare 9in (22.5cm) early 17th century engraved horn shoehorn.

Led Zeppelin, Robert Burns and a 14-year-old John Everett Millais might seem unlikely bedfellows. But a group of four pencil drawings which have surfaced at the Devon auctioneers Chilcotts of Tiverton appear to link the three.

The late Fred Dibnah's 1912 Aveling and Porter Ltd steam tractor fetched £240,000 at Cheffins vintage auction on July 24, selling to Michael Oliver, chairman of Knutsford-based manufacturer Oliver Valves.

ON August 21, Andrew Hilton will host his first sale of commemoratives and pot lids under the new name of his business, Historical & Collectable.

Among a series of records for British watercolours posted during Sotheby's sale entitled An Exceptional Eye: A Private British Collection on July 14, the most spectacular price was the £2.1m bid for this striking view of the Lake of Albano and Castel Gandolfo by John Robert Cozens (1752-1797).

“ED seriously injured late today when train hit car – Ritch”. When a shocked John Steinbeck received this telegram in May, 1948, he left immediately for Monterey, California, but by the time he got there his good friend Ed Ricketts, the man he later described as being “part of my brain for 18 years”, was dead.

JUST one week after Christie’s held their series of London sales from the cellars, storehouses and attics of Althorp, ancestral home of the Spencer family, Sotheby’s announced that they are to hold an autumn auction of attic treasures from Chatsworth, the Derbyshire home of the Dukes of Devonshire.

WHEN it comes to modern prints, Edvard Munch (1863-1944) stands in a league with only Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol as artists who have made sums getting on for £1m at auction. However, Bonhams broke through that barrier on July 13 when they offered an extremely rare version of one of the Norwegian artist’s best known images.

IT may be a specialised collecting area, but antique bottles have plenty of enthusiasts at all levels. In the sub-sector of antique wine bottles, this 7in (18cm) high example ticked many of the boxes when it came up for sale in Exeter at Bearnes, Hampton & Littlewood last week.

AT 11 1/2 stone and 4ft 3in (1.3m) wide, it is big enough to bathe in. Baron Raby’s wine cistern was ordered from the workshops of goldsmith Philip Rollos in 1705 as part of his ambassadorial plate in his capacity as Ambassador Extraordinary to the King of Prussia in Berlin.

HAD it not been for the headline-grabbing and record-breaking J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), the latest Old Master auctions in London would have seemed a bit flat.

THE Lyon & Turnbull sale at Edinburgh got off to a splendid start when Lot 1, a Worcester porcelain plate from the Duke of Gloucester service, c.1770, sold at £12,000.

THE latest Contemporary art sales in London were a little flatter than expected, but Modern British art generated a batch of stand-out prices.

TO many people, Geoffrey Godden is indivisible from English porcelain. The scholar and author is a name on every ceramic enthusiast’s bookshelves through the many books on English ceramics written during the course of his 60 years of collecting and study.

THE latest Impressionist & Modern art auction series in London saw rising returns for the salerooms but buyers reacted unfavourably to heavy estimates on the most expensive works.

A GROUP of five photographs by pioneering British photographer Roger Fenton (1819-1869) sold for £100,500, some five times above their combined estimate, at Dominic Winter of South Cerney, Gloucestershire on June 17.

HOUSE contents sales always create a frisson of excitement. Alongside the stars of the show, big-ticket pieces that comes trailing clouds of pre-sale publicity, there is the potential thrill of the unexpected, the serendipitous attractions of the less elevated contents of cellar, outhouse and attic, which hold out the possibility of a bargain.

THE unexpected highlight of the sale conducted by Cheffins of Cambridge on June 9-10 came courtesy of this mahogany writing table. Estimated at £4000-6000, it sold at £68,000 (plus 17.5 per cent buyer's premium).

THERE can be no more important figure in British inter-War aviation than the aircraft designer Reginald Joseph Mitchell (1895-1937).

FROM perfume bottles and menu holders to vases and car mascots, the glass creations of René Lalique remain consistently appealing to a varied gamut of buyers.