Auctioneers

Auctions with half an eye on the gift-giving season proliferate throughout late November and early December.

The sale of Chinese and other Asian Works of Art at Semley Auctioneers in Shaftesbury, Dorset, included the largest known group of works by the artist Mrs H Clark.

Important Irish mahogany furniture returned to market on November 11 when Brunk Auctions in North Carolina sold the so-called Mississippi Rococo collection of Jerold D Krouse.

On November 25, Gloucestershire auction house Chorley’s is selling the personal collection of Ray Leigh (1928-2025), one of the more significant figures in post-war British design.

Lovers’ eyes became a la mode from c.1790 and remained fashionable in the courts and affluent families of England, Russia, France and North America until the early 1830s.

A trio of works by Cumbrian artist Sheila Fell (1931-79) were among the highlights of Newcastle saleroom Anderson & Garland’s (25% buyer’s premium) latest Modern Art & Design Auction.

The gold rush that followed the discovery of significant deposits in New South Wales and Victoria in 1851, was a catalyst for the first colonial jewellery expressing an Australian identify.

Norman Grant, a student of David Hodge at Gray’s School of Art, began to design and make jewellery from his garden shed in the late 1960s.

This small silver ‘V for Victory’ pendant made by the London firm of John Pinches Medallists for Cartier London is engraved Winston Churchill 1951-1955.

One of the eight York Rose brooches given by Prince Albert (later George VI) to the bridesmaids who attended his marriage to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother) in 1923, will be offered at Noonans in Mayfair on November 25.

Newbury auction house Dreweatts (27% buyer’s premium) held a sale last month titled Syrie Maugham: A Family Collection, offering items from the interior designer and her descendants.

The books sale at Koller (25% buyer’s premium) in Zurich on September 17 was topped at SwFr250,000 (£237,250) by a first edition of the book Einstein described as “perhaps the greatest intellectual stride that it has ever been granted to any man to make”.

Proving once again that fine tiaras associated with royalty and or aristocracy carry a financial premium, Lyon & Turnbull (26% buyer’s premium) sold the Airlie tiara on October 22.

The renewed fashion for ancient bronzes during the Qing period reflected a confluence of scholarly interest, artistic expression and political strategy.