Front Page and News

A Bath museum hopes to acquire a rare hoard of coins found in a Chew Valley field that could be valued at £4m.

Many of the high prices achieved at last week’s ‘celebrity’ sale titled Bob Hawke & Blanche d’Alpuget: Mementos, Curiosities, Art and Design reflected the impact of souvenir hunters, anxious to own a reminder of Australia’s former prime minister who died earlier this year. But not all of them.

Purchased for £1 from a Hertfordshire charity shop earlier this year, a Qianlong famille rose wall vase will carry an estimate of over £50,000 at Sworders in the autumn.

A first edition of the most famous work in angling literature will be offered at auction in North Yorkshire.

Auction house Bellmans has announced the appointment of Samantha Dunn-Davies to head its new London office in Brook Street, Mayfair.

This copper-alloy Roman mask will be offered for sale on September 3 by TimeLine Auctions in London, estimated at £80,000-100,000.

Paul Viney, chairman of Woolley & Wallis and a 25-year veteran at the Salisbury saleroom, is handing over the role to colleague John Axford.

Defra has issued a fresh warning for the antiques trade on the import and export of CITES-listed natural history specimens ahead of Brexit.

An archive relating to a once famous Suffolk dynasty comes for sale at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet on September 10-11. The diaries, journals and letters of Lady Ann Cullum (1807-75) of Hardwick House near Bury St Edmunds form part of a Fine Interiors sale.

Hansons plans to hold auctions at all three of its venues after its purchase of the freehold of Bishton Hall in Staffordshire.

Brought into the Epping saleroom of the Bonington auction house with a collection of Moorcroft, this Florentine Mannerist bronze sold for £150,000.

Relatively few English spinets from the 17th century survive but one surfaced at a Criterion auction in Islington. Loosely catalogued and estimated at just £100-200, it made £5500 (plus premium).

A UK dealer is considering moving Chinese objects to the US earlier than planned in the hope of staying ahead of import tariff changes.

A miniature gold, nephrite and rock crystal sedan chair by Fabergé has been consigned for sale at the Cotswold Auction Company in Cirencester.

Last week in Teddington, Hansons auctioned a dressing gown owned by Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert (1819-61). Hammered down at £3000 on August 12 (plus 25% buyer’s premium), it was bought by Historic Royal Palaces and will go on display at Kensington Palace.

A painting of the early Christian martyr St Agatha by Italian artist Carlo Dolci (1616-87) will return to Osterley Park and House in west London where it once hung.

Two rare pre-war Dinky trade boxes which had been in loft storage for two generations appeared for sale in Lincolnshire. Toy specialist M&M Auctions (21.6% buyer’s premium inc VAT) in Spalding offered them on behalf of a family who had owned the toys since new in the mid-1930s.