Collectables

A poignant description of life as an artist studying at the Royal Academy in the mid-19th century emerged at auction and more than doubled its estimate.

An early version of virtual reality, the Victorian craze of stereoscopes is firmly in focus this summer

Born into a Jewish Orthodox family in Brooklyn, New York, Seymour Stein (1943-2023) discovered his love of pop music early on, listening to records and memorising Billboard magazine’s charts.

Denis Pellerin, co-curator of the Brian May Archive of Stereoscopy (BMAS) and co-curator of the upcoming Watts Gallery exhibition, tells ATG about the collection

Once thought to have been produced in the Black Forest region of Germany, chess sets like the one offered at Ewbank’s (30% buyer’s premium) on June 23, used to be called Luther sets.

A Cornish saleroom offered over 300 enamel signs, advertising memorabilia, pump globes, vehicle mascots and collectables from a single-owner collection.

Recent advertising highlights from UK sales and an Italian auction

Rather than the rich and famous it was this photograph of three haggard workers that caught the eye in a Cincinnati saleroom.

Looking more like a sale brochure when unopened, the embossed front cover shown below in fact conceals a rare 1906 stereoscopic viewer.

Victorian and Edwardian pottery butcher’s slabs made to display lard, butter and margarine are relatively frequent visitors to UK salerooms.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions held on thesaleroom.com

Anyone sitting through a slideshow of images from an extraordinary photograph collection of Indian, south-east Asian, and Middle Eastern subjects sold in a US auction could be there for a long time.

Collecting genre is being boosted by fresh bidders with deep pockets who work in the technology sector

Leica cameras of rather different dimensions to normal clicked into action at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium).

A group of drawings which helped develop the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew have been temporarily blocked from export in the hope a UK buyer can step in.

Just as stereoscope images became a Victorian collecting craze, another notable photographic fad of the era was the carte de visite

Carolina Valdés Vignoli of Carol Tresor concentrates on collectors’ pieces of mineralogical interest and shipwreck pottery. She is preparing an exhibition of minerals in September at the LAPADA fair in Mayfair.

An early book on cricket from the library of commentator John Arlott has been acquired for the British Library from London dealership Peter Harrington.