News

UK: A POTENT combination of nostalgia and rarity lay behind the £12,000 paid for the poster pictured here in Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10 per cent buyer’s premium) annual ski poster sale on February 22.

UK: A TYPICAL mammoth offering of 1463 lots at the Norfolk rooms’ collectors’ sale included something for just about anyone buying on a modest budget – and, as usual, a few unexpected bidding battles.

INVALUABLE have secured a £1m injection of capital from an ethical investment fund to help develop their stolen database services further.

UK: DOROTHY L. SAYERS, with the able assistance of Lord Peter Wimsey, established herself as one of the foremost figures in what is now termed the ‘Golden Age’ of detective stories, but she was also a remarkably versatile and wide-ranging playwright, a Christian thinker, an essayist and translator, and an accomplished scholar in the field of European medieval literature.

UK: THE Staffordshire auctioneers are the latest to introduce a Decorative Arts section to their sales to catch the current market trend and, although in this case, these largely comprised the sort of 20th century ceramics seen in most rooms, giving them their own section appeared to pay off.

UK: DETECTIVE fiction is the theme of the first of my much-delayed reports on the English Literature & History sale held by Sotheby’s on December 19 – though there have been several cross-references to items from this sale in earlier issues – and it takes the form of a largely pictorial selection of books from the relevant section of the Ronald Segal library.

Two weeks ago (Issue No. 1478) we reported the sale of Sigmar Polke’s re-discovered 1963-64 Untitled Doppel portrat, above left, at a record £1.05m at Sotheby’s February 7 Contemporary Art Sale in London to the German collector Friedrich ‘Mick’ Flick.