Front Page and News

Growth “across all value levels of the market” helped global sales at Christie’s increase by 26% to £5.1bn in 2017, says Orlando Rock, chairman of Christie’s UK.

A pendulum clock used in an early longitude trial will be offered for sale by Dreweatts next month.

Heritage Auctions says more than half of its sales are now made through the internet.

Antiques dealership Mallett and book specialist Bloomsbury are to be relaunched this year after being reunited with former stablemate Dreweatts.

Texas-based fine art and collectables specialist Heritage Auctions announced a number of new developments to its mobile app last month. Advances included one-touch mobile bidding and an extension to the barcode scanning facility for coins.

A previously unrecorded painting attributed to Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, the Italian Old Master known as il Guercino (1591-1666), has been consigned to Cambridge auction house Cheffins.

The Australian professional auctioneering body has called for all auctioneers to introduce client accounts – known as trust accounts in Australia – to avoid a repeat of the grim situation at failed firm Mossgreen.

Leading Roseberys’ inaugural stand-alone sale of 20th century decorative arts on January 23 – the first under new head of department Fiona Baker – was this large Art Deco ceramic vase and cover (right) by the important French Art Deco ceramicist René Buthaud (1886-1986).

Dawson’s Auctioneers & Valuers is expanding into the capital with a new valuation office in north London.

A 17th century long-necked sealed ‘shaft and globe’ wine bottle sold for an unexpected £8300 (plus 15% buyer’s premium) at Barbara Kirk Auctions in Penzance on January 23.

London coins and medals specialist Dix Noonan Webb is changing its management structure.

Mossgreen is only the latest in a list of auctioneers that have gone under owing money to its core customers – consignors.

An Arctic Medal with a provenance indicating it was awarded to a member of the doomed Franklin Expedition which vanished searching for the elusive Northwest Passage has surfaced at a Surrey auction house.

Paul Sumner’s hopes of a restructure of Australian saleroom Mossgreen melted away last week after his proposed investment plan failed and the administrator began winding down the business.

Chiswick Auctions has taken on a trio of books specialists from Bloomsbury Auctions as the west London saleroom kicks off 2018 with a new sales programme.

Rising rents and business rates in central London have forced Rountree Tryon Galleries to downsize.

Sworders is to sell the primary contents of North Mymms Park, Hertfordshire – including a collection of European tapestries that have been at the property for over a century.

A precedent-setting legal dispute over a $10m (£7.2m) fee relating to the 2014 sale of a $210m Paul Gauguin painting has been won by auctioneer turned art adviser Simon de Pury.

London is to host a viewing of a small oil painting by Paul Cézanne ahead of its sale in the US.

The annual TEFAF art market report has been scrapped in favour of a number of smaller, focused reports.