Auctioneers

Playing cards from two recent provincial sales are featured here – five examples from a 250-lot, single-owner collection offered in Gloucestershire, and a single pack from a Worcestershire sale.

At the Drouot auction centre on June 6 the Paris firm of Binoche et Giquello will be selling a third instalment from a US collection of pre-Columbian works from Meso, Central and South America which is expected to realise in the region of €3m-4m.

Two collections assembled since the late 1960s enthuse a fresh generation of buyers.

Inside Manchester Airport stands a sculpture dedicated to John Alcock and Arthur Brown, two aviators who made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in June 1919.

Tribal art makes regular saleroom appearances in Paris, which is one of the major commercial centres in this sector.

Illustrated below is one of seven lots of Dutch ‘white metal ’ miniature tableware and furniture entered into a weekly general sale at Gorringe’s (21% buyer’s premium).

A portrait by Henry Lamb (1883-1960) making its first appearance at auction fetched a sale-topping £18,000 at Cambridge auction house Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) on May 9.

Spring is a traditional point in the saleroom calendar for New York to mount its tribal art auctions.

The furniture market continues to enjoy its occasional moments in the sun. During The Pedestal’s (25% buyer’s premium) sixth sale at Moor Park, Hertfordshire, on April 30 a George III carved mahogany octagonal tripod table (estimate £12,000-18,000) sold for £24,000.

The market for tribal art covering works from Africa, Oceania and the Americas has a global reach these days. While particular centres form cultural and commercial hubs (New York, Paris and Brussels in particular), you can find fairs and shows, shops and auctions around the world. Recent sale highlights and previews from some of the upcoming auctions and fairs are featured here.

Rusty, dusty and damaged, but bearing the magic of Marklin, a pre-First World War toy train emerged from the garage at a local house clearance. It starred in a collectors sale at the Cumbrian saleroom of 1818 Auctioneers (20% buyer’s premium inc VAT).

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales below £800, including an oil on canvas by Rowland Hill of a Donegal bay.

The Watch Sale at Fellows in Birmingham on June 18 includes arare Rolex Oyster Cosmograph Daytona chronograph with ‘reverse panda’ white on black dial.

Antiquities and tribal art will be on offer at Chiswick Auctions in west London on June 27.

After more than 50 years as a designer for international stamps and banknotes printer Waterlow & Sons, Leonard Douglas Fryer (1891-1965) retired to enjoyable obscurity at his home in Ilford.

While the 19th century English painter John Frederick Lewis (1805-76) is chiefly remembered for his major Orientalist creations – several of which have sold for more than £1m at auction – much less is known about his early career.

Catalogued as ‘exceptional’, this farmhouse refectory table fulfilled the auctioneer’s adjective in more than one way at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) sale in Dorchester on April 26.

Successfully bid to £80,000 among cartographic lots offered in London was a fine coloured copy of Ortelius’ Theatrum… of 1592.