Auctions

UK: Illustrated here is The People’s Rights, a copy of Winston Churchill’s 1910 book which has made two appearances at the Aylsham salerooms of G.A. Key in recent months – with very different results.

UK: ALTHOUGH there were no real star entries at this monthly dispersal, around 727 lots managed to generate a total at £120,00 boosted by a silver section and some pieces of local interest.

UK: A George III Chippendale style giltwood wall mirror with a swan neck and cartouche pediment, 7ft 10in high by 3ft 5in wide (2.39 x 1.04m) was consigned to Gorringes’ sale in Lewes on April 21 with expectations of £2500-3000 and sold to a telephone bidder at £22,000 plus 10 per cent premium.

UK: THE contents of Higher Farm in the Somerset village of Hornblotton provided the venue and the entries for auctioneer Peter Hobden’s sale.

UK: AT this two-day, 1112-lot sale in East Sussex auctioneer Mark Hudson was pleased to see a broader buying base than has been the case at many rooms of late saying: “Middle-range furniture featured at the beginning of the furniture section was easy to sell.”

Bearnes, Exeter, March 23 Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent UK: HIGHLIGHTS of this sale included Thomas Short’s Comparative History of the Increase and Decrease of Mankind in England... and also a Meteorological Discourse, 1767, which, in the process of assembling historical and medical information, advocates early marriage and denounces alcohol as ‘a Stygian poison’. It sold at £100.

UK: CONSIGNED by a Stockport couple who had been keen skiers during the 1950s, this late 19th century Black Forest carved hall seat, left, proved the unexpected highlight of Bonham’s (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) sale of general antiques in Manchester on March 24.

Ewbank, Send, March 25 Buyer’s premium: 10 per cent UK: An amusing, illustrated letter sent by the 16-year-old Edward Coley Burne Jones to his aunt Amelia on May 7, 1849, topped this sale with a London bid of £880.

The flying logbook of Fred Shaw, an RCAF navigator, received quite a lot of media publicity when Sotheby’s Sussex announced its sale, because of a suggestion that it sheds light on the disappearance of bandleader Glenn Miller in December 1944.

UK: CHRISTIE’S chairman Lord Hindlip has declared himself more excited about the prospect of selling the £20m plus collection of Nathaniel and Albert von Rothschild on July 8 than about any other sale in his 36 years at the auction house.

US: ON August 15 1876, nearly ten years after his fellow American inventor Christopher Scholes had offered the world its first ever typewriter, Thomas Edison patented an electric method for the small businessman to print and copy several documents.

Comtemporary Ceramics UK: WITH THEIR big event scheduled for June, Bonhams (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) March 25 Contemporary Ceramics sale was very much a mid-season affair.

G.E. Sworder & Sons, Stansted Mountfitchet, March 16 Buyer’s premium: 10 per cent UK: "CERAMICS and collectables are usually well received by the trade, but at this 1000-lot sale they were met with a muted response, silver and jewellery were eagerly sought after while the furniture met with a keen response from trade and private buyers,” said auctioneer Guy Schooling.

FRANCE: THE dispersal of the Paul Amos collection of French medals, under the auspices of expert Sabine Bourgey at Piasa (10.854 per cent buyer’s premium) in Paris on March 8 represents an event for which we have to go back some years to find anything comparable.

Carolean court cupboard emerges from Cumbrian chicken shed UK: EARLY oak furniture attracted the higher prices at the quarterly sale ‘Antiques and Collectors’ sale at the Skirsgill Salerooms in Cumbria where the most valuable lot was a James II one-piece oak court cupboard.

UK: THE highlight of the Natural History sale held by Christie’s on March 17 – a lot which had its own separate catalogue – was the Moller Florilegium.

US: ONE of 167 illustrations which make up Frans Masereel’s My Book of Hours, one of the woodcut novels pioneered by the Belgian political cartoonist in the early part of this century.

US: THE BOOKS and manuscripts sold as part of a March 16 ‘Judaica’ sale held by Sotheby’s included material from the library of the late Alfred Rubens (1903-98), a distinguished historian and collector whose Jewish Iconography of 1954 became the ‘bible’ for scholars of Jewish prints.

UK: ON March 23, Sotheby’s held their first ever sale devoted entirely to the Holy Land.

UK: Maria Szantho (b. 1898-?) was a Hungarian artist who specialised in glamour girl nudes which crop up with some regularity in the salerooms, generally at prices between £500-3000.