News

UK: THE late Bob Ewers is remembered fondly by devotees of diecast toys as one of the key players in founding the UK’s first static model collectors club in Maidenhead in 1969, and there was an enormous response to the dispersal of his collection at the Lewes salerooms of Wallis & Wallis (15 per cent buyer‘s premium) on February 12.

UK: ILLUSTRATED here are just three lots from the remainder of the Sotheby’s Travel sale, representing polar voyages, English topography and Middle Eastern costume.

BELGIUM: E. Hébert’s dynamic late 19th century patinated bronze group of Two Boxers landed BFr190,000 (£3060) at Amberes in Antwerp on February 5.

UK: THE 105-lot furniture section harboured all the best prices in the first of Maxwells, Wilmslow, quarterly Antiques and Collectors Items auctions of the year.

UK: ONE of 50 coloured illustrations from Alexandre Iacovleff’s Dessins et Peintures d’Afrique of 1927, which sold for £800. One of 100 copies, it comprised a text volume in leather-backed satin covers painted with an African design and a pigskin portfolio containing the loose plates.

FRANCE: A SET of 56 folio engraved plates by the Renaissance draughtsman and engraver Jacques Androuet du Cerceau (Paris c.1560), showing various Renaissance furniture designs ranging from buffets and tables to wardrobes and beds, below right, tripled hopes on Fr70,000 (£6800) in Chartres on January 21.

UK: THAT pedestal partners’ desks have become the most in-demand of writing furniture has been obvious for some time – their rise has been matched by the decline of computer-incompatible davenports – but even so this mid-19th century example, offered at the Abergavenny rooms of J. Straker, Chadwick & Sons (6 per cent buyer’s premium) on February 9 achieved a notable price.