News

Fewer lots were on offer at this year’s Frieze-week auctions in London but demand generally held up with international bidders taking advantage of favourable exchange rates.

Two Russian diamond necklaces, with links to Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, will be auctioned by Sotheby’s in Geneva next month with a $10m estimate.

African artefacts, jewellery and fossils from a family collection linked to the celebrated palaeoanthropologists, the late Louis and Mary Leakey, are to be sold later this month at The Cotswold Auction Company.

The new management of Stanley Gibbons has launched a scathing attack on the way the firm had been run after the collectables and auction group posted losses of £29m.

Lawyers representing the Frenchman Giulano Ruffini have defended his role in handling paintings at the centre of a ‘fakes scandal’ besetting the Old Masters market.

Frontman Paul Weller’s shoes and bassist Bruce Foxton’s guitars were among 800 lots of The Jam memorabilia auctioned at the weekend.

A musket made in the Chinese Imperial workshops, complete with marks, will become the first of its kind to be offered at auction next month.