Print Edition

When the hammer comes down on your bid, that means the lot is yours. Most of the time this is true, but not always. The auction process and the auctioneer are always fallible.

Sold for £6000 in a Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of March 30 was a copy of one of the earliest books on swimming.

The time has come for the second of Robert Young Antiques’ three annual events. The Exhibition of Antiques Folk Art is the only one to take place in the dealer’s Battersea gallery and this year runs from May 11-20.

“Wait a minute. You’re putting my gloves in jail? This is awful. How can you put my gloves in jail? They ain’t done nothing… yet!”

Antique dolls supremo Judy Bebber has been organising the biannual Kensington Doll Show at Kensington Town Hall for 20 years.

Compiled by J Wells Kelly and published in San Francisco in 1862, a rare copy of the First Directory of Nevada Territory…, which was worn, dry and splitting but in original, leather-backed printed boards, sold for $6500 (£5080) in a PBA Galleries sale of April 20.

Latest in a number of outstanding pieces of English furniture to surface and succeed at provincial auctions was this pair of satinwood inlaid demi-lune card tables, above, offered at Stride & Son (20% buyer’s premium including VAT) at Chichester on March 31.

A collection of early 20th century German works on paper, brought to England in the possession of a German academic who fled the Nazis on the eve of the Second World War, appeared at Canterbury Auction Galleries (20% buyer’s premium) on April 4-5.

ATG’s weekly selection of items on sale at auctions and dealerships.

Catch of the day at Cockermouth auctioneers Mitchells’ (20% buyer’s premium) sporting sale on April 8 was a cast of a salmon. The 48lb fish, cast by Mallochs of Perth, was estimated at £1800-2000 but was reeled in by a Scottish enthusiast at £5200.

Best round scores in the most recent PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) golfing sale came with the appearance of a group of the papers of golfing historian and collector CB Clapcott.

Gustave Vichy was probably the most accomplished manufacturer of automata in fin de siècle France. A prime example of his art is putting in an appearance at the May 20 sale of Auction Team Breker in Cologne.

MADAM – In last week’s Books, Maps & Prints supplement (ATG No 2290), on page 39 it is stated that the German astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered Venus.

The antiquarian book trade has lost two well-known faces with the deaths of Frank Herrmann and Roy Davids.

A scarce complete portfolio of 26 prints from Erté’s (1892-1990) famed Alphabet Suite appeared at Henry Adams (20% buyer’s premium) on April 12 in Chichester.

The largest group of photographs from Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) to come on the market since the Museum of the City of New York deaccessioned its duplicates in 2002 is offered in Heritage Auctions’ photographs sale on May 18-19.

Described as a building full of clues and symbolism created by its architects John Seely and Paul Paget, Eltham Palace was designed in 1933 for the vastly rich art collectors Virginia and Stephen Courtauld of textiles fame.

This 176oz Victorian presentation silver centrepiece offered for sale at Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury on April 25 has a strong Dutch connection.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has settled a long-running dispute with the estate of a Jewish collector whose house contents was sold by the Graupe Auction House in Berlin in 1937.

ATG’s weekly selection of items on sale at auctions and dealerships.