Cameras & Camera Equipment

THE way Bonhams’ (17.5% buyer's premium) empire has adapted to the received wisdom that specialisation is a key to today’s macro auction environment is to have niche markets catered for at different outposts. Among the areas catered for at the Midlands branch at Knowle are such widely known ones as mechanical music and railwayana and, in ascending degree of arcane nature, wireless sets, optical instruments, firemarks, truncheons and tipstaffs.

Cameras: A 100 per cent sell-out is something to crow about these days and Christie’s South Kensington were certainly pleased to chalk up a complete success for their sale of Jim Barron’s collection of British Cameras on December 11.

Major photograph sales are usually confined to London and New York salerooms, but since selling the Earl Craven family archive of daguerreotypes last year Bearne’s of Exeter (buyer’s premium 15 per cent) are now on the international circuit.