Auctioneers

The latest round of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s represented the highest overall total for a ‘London’ auction series since before the coronavirus pandemic.

Charles Carroll’s printed copy of the Declaration of Independence – discovered earlier this year in a Scottish family home – sold at auction in Philadelphia for $3.7m (£2.85m) plus premium.

Works by the Zinkeisen sisters continue to bring demand at auctions around the country.

Old Master paintings come up for sale throughout the year in France but the summer season traditionally mounts a number of dedicated auctions in the field.

Among works by eastern European artists in demand recently, two pictures by modern Polish artists led the sale at a Buckinghamshire auction.

Wide range of material offered in Cambridge generates an array of interesting results.

Some of the world’s most famous Old Master paintings have been highly regarded for many centuries, carrying a reputation that has led to them being replicated and copied by other artists – sometimes soon after their creation.

Some lots in a recent Chicago sale were quite enormous – like a near-complete run of Limited Editions Club publications from the years 1929-2010.

Mallams’ (25% buyer’s premium) Jewellery, Watches and Silver sale included this Commonwealth silver wine goblet.

This Ford Escort once owned by Diana, Princess of Wales, has been bought by a museum in Chile.

Smaller decorative pieces by Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson (1876-1955) continue to excel in the saleroom.

Works by Grigorescu are seldom seen in British auctions but one emerged in West Sussex

Thomas Riley was one of the few professional tattooists of the Victorian and Edwardian era and – with patrons among international royalty and the aristocracy – a key figure in the changing perception of tattoos from ‘sailors’ marks’ to ‘body art’.

Bid online to a much higher than expected £3200 in a Dominic Winter (24% buyer’s premium) sale was a framed and glazed Thomas Rowlandson etching with contemporary colouring that depicts a famous 'Milling Match…' in 1811.

Based on Warring States (475-225BC) archetypes, archaistic bronze ritual wine vessels, zun, formed as tapirs became popular during the Northern Song period, remained so through to the Qing dynasty, and are major draws in Western salerooms today.

As recently as a decade ago relatively little attention was paid to Iraqi niello silver.

What auctioneer Michael Callan called “a modest mid terrace town house in Irvine, Ayrshire” was the source of one of the star lots of a recent Thomas R Callan (20% buyer’s premium) sale in Ayr.

While prices and interest have been declining in desk sets since computer laptops rendered them largely redundant, there are exceptions.