London

The extraordinary prices realised for football memorabilia such as the £140,000 bid at Christie’s South Kensington for Pele’s Brazilian 1970 World Cup Final shirt reflect sporting collectors’ current obsession with the beautiful game.

THE acquisition of a unique collection of Afghan textiles has highlighted the cash crisis at the British Museum. Despite spending £34,000 on the collection, including a £26,000 grant from the National Arts Collection Fund, the BM’s ethnographic textiles collection has nowhere to display it.

Ever keen to come up with new auction formats that stimulate the interest of private buyers, Bonhams (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) held their first sale of sporting and ornithological pictures combined with sporting guns at Knightsbridge on August 7-8.

This muscular terracotta modellino of a moor, Il Moro, 2ft 75/8in high (80.5cm), attributed to Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), wrested the top slot from a powerfully modelled pair of 16th century bronzes in Sotheby’s (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) 174-lot European Sculpture and Works of Art 900-1900 auction on July 9.

The schwein-degen, or boar sword, is a rare beast. Good examples can elude collectors for decades, and the cobwebbed halls of schloss- dwelling aristocrats are a favourite hiding place. So there was plenty of excitement when an example broke cover at Sotheby’s sale of arms and armour in London on July 10.

IF YOU want to brush up your knowledge of contemporary interior decoration or check out the movers and shakers in today’s design world, then make sure you take in 100% Design at Earls Court Two next month.

SIXTEEN letters in the hand of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, written in the years 1746-48, in the aftermath of Culloden, formed a key part of this manuscript sale at Bloomsbury Book Auctions (17.5/10% buyer's premium) on June 20.

BUDDING interior designers will find no shortage of dates for the diary in the salerooms next month. On September 30 Sotheby’s Olympia launch their first in a new series of interior decorator sales with a multi-property selection featuring material billed as “of great visual impact to appeal to the professional designer and discerning collector alike”.

A Chinese works of art sale held by Christie’s on June 18 included a set of S.W. Bushell’s Oriental Ceramic Art illustrated by Examples from the Collection of W.T. Walters, published in 10 volumes in 1897 and illustrated with 116 chromos by Louis Prang after J & J.C. Callowhill.

“Up above the streets and houses, Rainbow climbing high...”. Down the Old Brompton Road in Christie’s salerooms on July 11, veteran fans of the 1970/80s psychedelic children’s TV programme Rainbow had good reason to croon the immortal lyrics of their favourite theme tune.

BONHAMS, who have just announced their acquisition of US fine art auctioneers Butterfields from eBay, are to consolidate almost their entire programme of London sales at Knightsbridge and Bond Street.

TOP LOT in this comparatively modest sale of Continental books and manuscripts at Sothebys on June 11, at £52,000 to a European dealer, was an autograph manuscript of one of Goethe’s more celebrated poems, Sehnsucht, (Longing) dated to c.1802-03.

The Zurich firm Numismatica Ars Classica (NAC) are opening an office in London. Negotiations for a Crown lease on prestigious premises in Waterloo Place (SW1) are well under way although they have suffered a slight setback which I understand will be resolved in the very near future. An autumn opening is planned.

Frontline forgery: LETTERS home during WW2 were extremely important to soldiers on the front. Each soldier was issued a quota of stamps which were specially overprinted to validate their posting from a specific location.

AT a convivial press lunch at Sotheby’s last week, scribes and dealers mingled to officially welcome the fifth Asian Art in London celebrations, scheduled for November 7 to 15.

AFTER a literary foray into the art world with her latest blockbuster Pandora, popular novelist Jilly Cooper will get a taste of the real thing on September 18 when she opens London’s 20/21 British Art Fair.

This month has seen a crop of antique arms and armour offered in the London rooms with Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams all holding sales in July. Pictured here is the most expensive item of the summer series, a rare cased Colt belt revolver of c.1840, which made £200,000 at Bonhams’ (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) sale in their Bond Street rooms on July 24.

The sale of pottery and porcelain from the Minton Museum Collection took place at Bonhams Bond Street on July 23. The 379 lots realised £714,025 net against an estimate of £400,000.

This rare 9in (23cm) diameter Venetian lattimo glass plate of c.1741, with iron red decoration of the Piazetta at Venice led Bonhams’ May 22 Continental ceramics sale when it was bid to £36,000.

Certainly the most expensive Coronelli globe ever sold, and quite possibly the costliest single globe of any kind at auction*, this 3ft 61/2in (1.08m) diameter terrestrial globe of 1688 was sold for £210,000 to a collector as part of a July 10 Cartography sale held by Christie’s.