Front Page and News

One of the highest-ever totals for an art auction in Ireland was set last week when the sale of the Ernie O’Malley collection held by Whyte’s of Dublin in association with Christie’s raised a premiuminclusive total of €5.42m (£4.65m).

Copenhagen auction house Bruun Rasmussen has set an auction record for any painting sold in Denmark.

Antiques and luxury items platform 1stdibs is increasing its monthly subscription fee to dealers by 42%, from £350 to £500. The firm says the move reflects the increasing cost of maintaining the online portal.

A focus on collectors and collections is the theme of London Art Week.

This rare late-17th century 4in (9.5cm) devotional pendant displays the craft of 'scherenschnitte' (scissor cuts).

A rare early 17th century bronze bust of a French statesman discovered in a country house has sold for €2.4m (£2.07m) hammer at the Drouot auction centre in Paris.

The first Olympic medals won by a black British athlete sold at Hansons last week for £8000 (plus premium), writes Laura Chesters.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum, the Brontës’ former family home, has secured an 1830 autograph miniature manuscript by a 14-year-old Charlotte Brontë (1816-55) that was auctioned at Aguttes in Paris.

A Qianlong teapot which made £800,000 in Dorchester provided the stellar result among some exceptional Asian art lots offered for sale in the UK regions and Ireland last week.

Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting 'Lucretia', which was in a private collection for more than 40 years, has made a new record for the artist at an auction in Paris.

Dealers and collectors have one final chance to overturn the Ivory Act 2018, after a judge granted them leave to appeal a High Court ruling upholding the new law.

A good-quality violin linked to the German maker Jacobus Stainer (1619-83) led a group of previously overlooked musical instruments in a Towcester auction.

Thirty pieces of antiquarian jewellery discovered next to a joint of meat in an old freezer were sold for £68,000 (plus 24% buyer's premum) at Kidson-Trigg near Highworth, Swindon.

The practice of placing a metal mark on a building to indicate insurance against a fire started in earnest after the Great Fire of London (1666). Each insurance company had its own fire service and distinctive logo.

Duke’s latest Asian art sale had been headlined by items from a local resident and well-known auctioneer, academic and collector, Anthony du Boulay. The 249 lots from early classic wares to Cantonese enamels generated plenty of saleroom energy and a total of around £800,000.

The Little collection of early English silver is coming to Christie’s London on December 3. The auction comprises 26 domestic vessels from the Tudor and early Stuart periods that survived the tumult of the Civil War period. Some pieces are considered the last of their type in private hands.