Auctions

Two strong results for very different pieces were produced in Christie’s double bill of English furniture on April 24.

SOMEWHERE on a shelf in a pub in the Midlands there may be five rare books that could throw a whole new light on the Brontë family.

A BATTERED old Bible in a strongbox with a woodcut pasted on the inside of the lid was sold with a boxed rosary for £6200 by auctioneer Paul Beighton of Thurcroft, near Rotherham on March 9. Behind it there was quite a story.

Christie’s are confidently expecting to set a new auction record for British furniture in London on June 18 when they offer a small but exclusive auction of just a dozen lots under the title 12: Exceptional furniture.

A world record price for a comic-strip illustration was paid at a specalist sale at Artcurial in Paris on March 29: Georges Remi Hergé’s 1932 ink-and-gouache design for the cover of Tintin en Amérique.

London’s latest series of Islamic auctions, held from April 7-11, produced a series of record-breaking statistics. The result of the week came at Sotheby’s on April 9 when a 14 1/2in (37cm) long iron and copper key to the ka’ba, the holiest place in the Islamic world, sold for £8.2m, establishing a new auction high for any Islamic work of art.

NORTH Yorkshire saleroom Tennants, who have made a name selling the furniture of Robert Thompson, have secured an entire Mouseman commission for sale in July.

An image that may rewrite the history of photography has been withdrawn from a Sotheby’s New York sale pending further research.

THREE bespoke Hardy reels were offered by Holts as part of their shooting sale at Princess Louise House, Hammersmith on March 20.

IT was the finest UK collection of antique fishing tackle to come to auction for a decade and it arrived via an unusual route.

A TOUCH of spring arrived in Dorchester on April 10-11 where amongst a number of five-figure prices at Duke’s two-day sale was this tiny watercolour of a branch of cherry blossom by the prolific Victorian theorist, critic and artist John Ruskin (1819-1900). Dated 1857, it is displayed here a fraction less than its actual size.

A pair of Dutch library globes by the man regarded as father of western globe making, Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), now rank the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction in Holland.

A companion work to an August Bohm masterpiece has bought a house record to Gloucestershire firm Wotton Auction Rooms.

Two medals awarded to the same man during the Crimean War, but separated for many years in different collections, have been reunited after selling to the same buyer at Smith & Wilde’s March 21 auction of militaria at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

The highlight of the Asia week series of auctions put on by the major salerooms was an impressive early Japanese wood sculpture of Buddha. It set a new auction high for a Japanese work of art when it was hammered down to the Japanese company Mitsukoshi Co Ltd for $12.8m (£6.7m) plus premium in Christie’s sale of Japanese and Korean art on March 18.

This oak architect’s or engineer’s chest is quite possibly a one-off piece made for renowned Liberty & Co. designer Archibald Knox by the Barnstable firm Shapland and Petter.

Vendors at an auction conducted by the former head of Christie's teddy bear and doll department are still waiting to be paid, more than three months after the sale. The parent company has now gone into receivership.

Is the final chapter in the story of Colin Wilson's ‘Giambologna’ monkeys about to be written? Not, it seems, without a twist in the tale.

Pre-war delivery vans advertising commercial brand names have long been the kings of the Dinky collectors’ market. This was reinforced on March 10 when Vectis of Stockton-on-Tees sold the so-called 5th Avenue Collection, which included examples bearing well known and long-forgotten brands.

Summers Place Auctions of Billingshurst, West Sussex, are to host The Glory Of The Garden in aid of St Catherine's Hospice, a Crawley-based charity, on May 16.