Auctioneers

Willem Janszoon Blaeu is one of the more famous names in the history of map and globe making and at Christie’s (25/20/13.5/% buyer’s premium), the tiny pocket globe attributed to him shown here was sold for a treble-estimate £230,000.

Although outwardly simple objects, cedar ‘bent corner’ chests, still made today by the indigenous people of the Pacific North West, employ a number of sophisticated woodworking techniques.

With an Irish silver ‘seal salver’ gleaming at the first Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (23% buyer’s premium) sale of the year (ATG No 2427), Italy, China and Russia provided other highlights.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales including an Ernest Procter watercolour.

A c.1900 half-length oil on canvas portrait of a girl with flowers caught the eye of bidders at Lacy Scott & Knight (24% inc VAT buyer’s premium) in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

In ATG No 2427 we noted the sale at Sotheby’s on December 10, at a very much higher than expected £50,000, of a rare copy of the 1553 translation into ‘Scots English’ of Virgil’s Aeneid by Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld.

Extraordinarily high prices paid for the works of the Russian writer Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev were noted in ATG No 2425, and there were many more lots of interest in the sale held by Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) in which they were offered.

March is when Paris turns its attention to the world of drawings and works on paper.

We regret to announce the death of auctioneer Michael Baker, who died aged 84 on October 12 last year.

Falling short of ambitious hopes but leading the day at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) first sale of 2020 was a fine English Golden Age longcase clock.

Among the gems spotted in 2092 mixed lots at Stroud Auctions’ (18% buyer’s premium) year-opener on January 8, the best-seller was the final lot.

Populated with grotesque figures, this 16th century engraving after the early Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516) sold for £16,000 at auction in London.

Popular in the first decades of the 19th century, the eight-key flute is something of a transitional instrument, retaining many of the characteristics of the earlier baroque flute and the modern instrument.

‘Masterpieces’ from the celebrated collections of Dr Martin Schøyen offered at a recent Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) sale in London included some real rarities.

This 18th century English provincial school full-length portrait depicts the jester Black John. He was in the employ of the famously eccentric John Arscott (1718-88) of the Tetcott estate in Devon, said to be the last man in England to keep a professional jester.

Two large watercolours painted by Y Ba Nyan (1897-1947), one of Burma’s most influential Modern artists, emerged for sale in Folkestone at the end of last year.

A spectacular cache of sealed 17th century bottles unearthed by workmen in Worcestershire will come to auction this year.

While items of Queen Victoria’s clothing are not a rare sight at auction, a collection on offer in Derbyshire proved of high enough quality to attract bidding from a world-famous collection of royal dress.