Latest News Articles by Roland Arkell
All the world is indeed a stage - playbill promotes Arctic theatre production
28 April 2025This rare playbill on silk printed in the Arctic in 1852 sold for £4400 at a recent sale at Keys (25% buyer’s premium) in Aylsham.
Overbeck’s early Nazarene painting sells at Tajan
24 April 2025A previously lost and unpublished work by Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869) sold for €104,000 (£87,000) as part of the Tajan (26% buyer’s premium) latest Old Master Paintings and Drawings sale.
‘Extraordinary discovery’: Kangxi bird paintings valued at £800,000 emerge at Roseberys
23 April 2025A group of 19 album leaves from the celebrated ‘Imperial Manual of Birds’ have been discovered in homes in Dorset and London.
Strong demand for Charles Rennie Mackintosh works as cutlery suite makes five times estimate
23 April 2025The latest Design Since 1860 sale at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh was dominated by the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928).
Cuneo’s painting of Germany’s unconditional surrender brings bidding at Sworders
22 April 2025A painting by Terence Cuneo depicting the German surrender at Lüneburg Heath has sold for £60,000 at Sworders.
Bonhams’ Japanese art sales moved out of London
21 April 2025In a loss to the sector, Bonhams has shelved its sales of Japanese works of art in London. Specialist Suzannah Yip, who had led Bonhams’ department for 18 years, has left the company after a decision was taken to move operations to Paris.
Prick of the bunch at £14,000 hammer
21 April 2025A diminutive Quaker pin cushion made to raise funds for a pioneering mental health hospital in York has sold for a remarkable sum at Woolley & Wallis.
Nature abhors a vacuum but Nollet’s audiences loved them
21 April 2025Among the more extraordinary forms of French furniture is the ‘machine pneumatique’ – a device used in the Age of Enlightenment to demonstrate the mysterious properties of the vacuum or ‘the energy of the nothingness’.
Chandigarh furniture designed by Jeanneret features in Cambridge and London auctions
21 April 2025In 1950, the Swiss artist, architect and designer Pierre Jeanneret (1896-1967) joined his cousin Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (who assumed the pseudonym Le Corbusier) to create a new capital of Punjab.
Italian sofa stars at huge Plas Teg house sale
21 April 2025Welsh auction house Rogers Jones (26.4% buyer’s premium inc VAT) recently conducted its largest house clearance in over 30 years: the principal contents of Plas Teg in Flintshire.
Interiors: Furniture that fits the bill
21 April 2025Whatever interior statement one hopes to achieve, it is so often the furniture that really makes a room.
Bureau ‘given by Churchill’ to admired Sir Bindon
21 April 2025Estimated at €1000, this 19th century Irish mahogany bureau with a link to Sir Winston Churchill sold for €9500 (£8000) at Fonsie Mealy (25% buyer’s premium) in Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny.
Idiosyncratic inspiration from the early years of the ‘age of mahogany’
21 April 2025A number of hall chairs of this idiosyncratic type from the early years of the ‘age of mahogany’ are known and have appeared on the market.
Pitch proves perfect second time around as table sells successfully
21 April 2025What a difference three years and an estimate can make.
West Country oak settle in demand in East Anglian auction
21 April 2025The second part of the Beedham Collection – a fine array of early oak furniture and associated works of art from the Derbyshire dealing family – came for sale at Bishop & Miller (25% buyer’s premium) in Glandford, Norfolk, on March 19.
Pietra Dura is a top find of Bishop’s House
21 April 2025The contents of the Bishop’s House in Newry, standing on the Clanrye river in counties Down and Armagh, were sold by Victor Mee (20% buyer’s premium) earlier this year.
Moller chairs sit nicely together
21 April 2025A recent sale at Burstow & Hewitt (20% buyer’s premium) in Battle, East Sussex was led by six Danish rosewood dining chairs designed by Niels Otto Moller for JL Moller.
Rediscovered Hans Coper vase found in garden flies over estimate at Chiswick Auctions
17 April 2025A monumental work by Hans Coper (1920-81) which was found in a London garden among weeds and covered in snails sold at more than three times estimate at Chiswick Auctions.
Trump's tariffs: trade seeks clarity on antiques exemptions as price of gold soars
14 April 2025Dealers and collectors are still seeking clarity on whether the US ‘Liberation Day’ trade tariffs will apply to antiques.