Collectables

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

The term ‘works on paper’ encompasses a diverse range of media from artist’s prints to posters, ephemera and documents. Pictured here, along with an array of books, is a section of items available to buy from dealers or bid for at auction.

With only eight of the 178 lots offered left on the shelves at the day’s end and a top lot in the six-figure bracket, a Doyle (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) online auction was certainly a success.

Every collector of glass petrol pump globes – or lenses as they are known in the US – hopes to own examples by the classic big brands: BP, Shell, Esso and the like.

Offered as part of a sale held in Bristol were two copies of 'The Merchants Avizo….', a work by a local man, John Browne.

MADAM – your item on the Victor Mee auction of pub memorabilia (ATG No 2467) contains a minor, yet possibly significant error.

Chaucer and Shakespeare, Darwin and Tolkien were among the big-name and more expensive lots sold as part of the Gerald and Barbara Weiner library at Hindman (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Chicago.

In 1793, well in advance of the Slave Trade Act (1807) and the Slavery Abolition Act (1833), 275 British men, women and children attempted to settle an uninhabited island off the coast of Sierra Leone.

The Fine Wine & Whisky sale at Tennants on December 12 features this Macallan-Glenlivet 1937 35-year-old Pure Highland Malt Scotch Whisky.

Principal attraction in a Crewkerne book sale at Lawrences (25% buyers premium) was the Browning family archive that featured as Pick of the Week in ATG No 2459, but three other items from that 370 lot sale are noted here.

Bertoia Auctions’ latest wide-ranging toy sale in Vineland, New Jersey, on November 12-13 includes this early Steiff teddy bear dating from c.1905.

Estimated at £200-300 in a Kent sale, a military commission that bears the signature of King George III and is additionally signed and endorsed by William Pitt the Elder, Britain’s prime minister at the time of the Seven Years War, sold online instead for £7500.

Old Master portraits dealer Mark Weiss tells us about his love for another kind of vintage. His collection leads our special report on the wine, whisky and spirits market.

Strong pre-sale interest emerged for two magnums of champagne offered separately at the Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium) Sussex Interiors including Asian Works of Art, Wines & Spirits auction in Wisborough Green on October 20.

A Chateau De Pomès Pédérère Armagnac distilled in 1950 is estimated at £200-300 at McTear’s Rare & Fine Whisky Auction on December 16.

Ewbank’s Fine Wines & Spirits auction in Surrey on December 17 includes this bottle of Bas Armagnac Baron de Sigognac 1951.

Christie’s holds its Finest and Rarest Wines and Spirits sale in London on December 11.

According to Dreweatts, the 1985 Richebourg by Henri Jayer “rightly holds the hallowed status of ‘legendary’ among Burgundy collectors – the sort of wine that people will travel across the world to experience”.