News

Phillips were making no comment last week following confident assertions in the Financial Times that a French takeover of the last of the top three auctioneers under UK ownership was imminent.

UK: THERE remains some serious money available for the rarest of the Royal Doulton HN series figures as was seen at this Lincolnshire sale when one of the first of the Harry Nixon series was offered.

HONG KONG: There were major series of sales in Hong Kong for Sotheby’s and Christie’s last week with both rooms offering selections of Chinese ceramics and works of art, jewellery and paintings.

UK: THE unknown British soldier who embroidered the crude depiction of his lonely blockhouse on the South African veld almost a century ago, could hardly have expected his work to end up on the hallowed walls of the National Army Museum in Chelsea, having provoked intense competition from international bidders at Bosley’s auction of militaria in Marlow on October 12.

UK: A PERMANENT exhibition space for objects from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg is to be part of the continuing development of London’s Somerset House as an arts complex.

UK: A heart-shaped London delft pill slab of c.1660-70, 12 x 10in (30 x 25cm), painted in blue, ochre and turquoise with the arms of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.

UK: ABOUT 30 years ago a local private lady purchased this 5.2in (13cm) high Charles II flat-lidded silver tankard, pictured right, for £6 at a Cumbrian jumble sale: a generation later, having realised its potential worth, she decided to place the vessel into the hands of the Cumbrian auctioneers Penrith Farmers’ & Kidd’s (10 per cent buyer’s premium) for their sale on September 29.