Front Page and News

Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi will more than double the Old Master auction record when it is offered at Christie’s New York next month.

As part of a fifth anniversary auction at Farleigh Court Golf Club on November 1, Catherine Southon is offering the first part of an archive consigned by the family of the commercial artist and cartoonist Francis Wilford-Smith (1927-2009).

The estate of a prominent Jewish art collector has failed to secure the return of a rare Meissen figure that was the subject of a recent export stop.

Glasgow saleroom Mulberry Bank will offer a late 18th century Qing famille rose bottle vase with an estimate of £1.5m-2m in its October 20-21 auction.

Update (July 2019): auctions resumed at Bloomsbury in 2018 following Gurr Johns' purchase of Dreweatts and Bloomsbury in 2017. In February 2019 it expanded the number of sales at its London office at 16-17 Pall Mall. The original story is below.

Anthony Browne, chairman of The British Art Market Federation (BAMF), was due to meet with environment secretary Michael Gove this week (October 10) to discuss the proposed ban on sales of ivory in the UK.

It’s taken more than a year to materialise but at last, the long-awaited consultation on ivory has arrived.

“Only a Rizla paper between them,” is what judge Philip Arnold declared as he announced the winner of the 2017 NAVA Propertymark Novice Auctioneer of the year.

An unusual medals sale has led to an unusual outcome. An application is to be made to export from Canada the Victoria Cross group won by heroic Lieutenant Colonel David Currie after it was bought by a British private collector.

Leading UK artists have donated works for an auction raising funds to establish a national centre for the artist Thomas Gainsborough.

The president of NAVA Propertymark has promised to increase the membership of the auctioneer and valuer association during his tenure and reiterated his quest to get more auctioneers registered.

A portrait of air vice-marshal James Edgar ‘Johnnie’ Johnson has been donated to the RAF Club in London after being sold by dealer MacConnal-Mason.

Sotheby’s Hong Kong autumn series posted benchmark sums in two Chinese works of art categories. Records were broken for both ceramics and carved jade.

The Mayor of London has confirmed the Met’s Art and Antiques Unit will re-form and will be led by a new head to take office this month.

Martel Maides in St Peter Port, Guernsey will sell a massive collection of Channel Islands silver on October 18, writes Roland Arkell.

The Master Drawings New York (MDNY) initiative has expanded its brief for 2018 to include painting and sculpture dealers among its 30 participants for the first time.

Italy has approved new laws relaxing the country’s art export regulations.

The sale of the Yeats collection at Sotheby’s in London brought mixed results: the highest estimated lot failed to sell but strong competition emerged elsewhere.

Dealers in English furniture are putting their weight behind events in 2018 marking the life of Britain’s most famous furniture maker, designer and entrepreneur, Thomas Chippendale (1718-79).

Documentary pieces of early English porcelain always command a premium.