Auctioneers

A £1.2m house record at Dreweatts was the highlight of the recent round of UK Asian art sales.

This 900-year-old Pala dynasty bronze figure of a Buddhist deity beat all expectations to bring £210,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) at Sworders’ Asian Art sale in Stansted Mountfitchet on May 13.

Man Ray’s 'Le Violon d’Ingres' has set a new record for a photograph, selling for $10.5m (£8m) at Christie’s in New York.

One of only a small number of drawings by Michelangelo still remaining in private hands sold for €20m (£16.9m) at Christie’s Paris last week.

This original concert poster advertises the second of two now legendary punk rock concerts in Manchester in the summer of 1976.

This large iron lock and key is inscribed Presented to WP Brookes Esq by a Member of the Wenlock Olympian Class May 18th 1869.

Among recent sales with a lyrical element was Mallams’ (25% buyer’s premium) Art & Music auction on April 6 in Oxford.

Pictured here are two examples of provenanced Chinese imperial works of art that achieved high prices in the French capital this spring.

In Massachusetts, auction firm Skinner (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) held the first of a series of sales given over to the carpet collection of Jim Dixon with an online session from April 25-May 6 and a live sale on May 4.

This pair of satinwood demilune console tables with their fine marquetry and carved details are of exceptional quality and workmanship. The Thomas Chippendale workshop is a good candidate for their manufacture.

A London saleroom offered what was billed as the only “known” surviving set of uncorrected galley proofs for Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone.

Koller will hold a three-session sale of Asian art in its Zurich rooms on June 1.

Underlining the recovery of the post-covid art market, at the very top-end at least, the latest series of 20th and 21st century auctions in New York posted a record total for a flagship auction fortnight.

This rare doucai porcelain vase, with Qianlong marks and probably of period, provided a classic tale of discovery in the saga of the Chinese boom.

The classic enamel station totem signs used in the early days of the newly formed British Railways have long shown their pulling power at auction.

More than 60 Dickens lots appeared in an April 26 sale of the library of Jeremy and Penny Martin, several of them bearing presentation inscriptions.

Work sold in Cambridge is thought to reflect US author's friendship with Scottish physician and essayist

The medallion of a kneeling slave asking the rhetorical question 'Am I Not A Man And A Brother?' was first made in 1787 on the founding of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

London dealer in historic instruments also amassed paintings on a musical theme

Popular figures were created in Chelsea by husband and wife duo Charles and Nell Vyse