Collectables

Guide to the prostitutes and brothels of London tempts bidders at Staffordshire sale.

Short message to a ‘true friend’ after opera debut appearance sells at Berlin auction house.

Tightly bound, clean and crisp, and “about the nicest copy we have seen” was the assessment by a specialist US saleroom of the biggest winner in its auction of a single-owner gambling memorabilia collection.

The German artist Heinrich Zille (1858-1929) was known for his caricatures and humorous and sometimes very blunt portrayals of the lower classes and demi-monde in Berlin around the beginning of the 20th century: his so-called milieu-studies.

MADAM – Having collected advertising for over 50 years, I recently sold this rare Gilbert Rae’s tinplate sign (below) which I always believed to be one of only a handful that still exist.

Some 150 lots of books formed part of a recent Irish auction held at Fortgranite, Baltinglass, in Co Wicklow, the home for over 200 years of the Dennis family.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Offered as a part of the natural history section of a May 14 book sale at Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) is an extremely rare photobook on New Zealand ferns by Herbert Boucher Dobbie issued c.1880 – no copy of which, it seems, has previously been seen at auction.

The inscription London on the barrels of this pair of 19th century, silver-mounted flintlock pistols is entirely spurious.

A very rare panorama of London that made £90,000 in a recent West Sussex sale was the Pick of the week in ATG No 2387, but many other things among the 200 lots offered in that April 5 auction caught the eye.

A 1782 first of James Stewart’s 'Plocacosmos: or, the Whole Art of Hair Dressing' illustrated with 10 plates showing hairstyles was offered as part of a Forum Auctions sale.

A large oil on panel map by MacDonald Gill celebrating the presence of stationer WH Smith on the British high street in the 1920s was hammered down at £50,000 in Gloucestershire.

Estimated at just £50-80, an Alice Davis Hitchcock medallion sold for £3000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium) at a Spink auction in London on April 10.

Detailed down to pneumatic tyres, knock-off hub caps and rack-and-pinion steering, the clockwork toy of Alfa Romeo’s P2, the world-beating racing car between 1924-30, was produced by CIJ (Compagnie Industrielle du Jouet) from 1924-35.

Something of a roll call for the great and good across the British 19th-20th century arts scene, Lyon & Turnbull’s (25% buyer’s premium) Decorative Arts: Design Since 1860 sale included such names as George Washington Jack, Sir Alfred Gilbert, Christopher Dresser, William de Morgan and Robert Bartlett.