Auctioneers

Some eye-catching individual prices punctuated the latest Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art sales in New York, helping to lift the year-on-year total .

Intricate representation labelled as a Royal Navy vessel has French prisoner-of-war origin.

A group of 15 works on paper by Salvador Dalí (1904-89) which were produced as Christmas card designs will be offered in Paris this summer. They are estimated to raise up to €1m at Artcurial’s Modern and Impressionist Art auction in Paris, writes Alex Capon.

Collections from two former British prime ministers – Sir Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher – sold out at auction in the same week.

Catalogued as ‘Art Nouveau… manner of Charlotte Rhead’, this pair of tube-lined tiles went at 10 times the estimate at Trevanion & Dean’s (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale in Whitchurch.

Two impressive golden bowls presented by the king of Siam to an enterprising Danish admiral, businessman and politician star in Bruun Rasmussen’s May 28 auction in Copenhagen.

Inherited Dutch Old Masters offered alongside recently acquired modern works by artists such as Walter Sickert, Edward Seago and Gerald Kelly proved a winning formula at Dreweatts’ (25% buyer’s premium) country house dispersal held on May 1 at Donnington Priory.

Discoloured, stained and in a crudely restored old binding, a scarce hunting work of 1704 was sold for a much higher than expected £1400 at a recent Hansons (20% buyer’s premium) sale.

Billed as the first printed edition of the most authoritative medical text in the Islamic world, a 1593 copy of a work known in the English-speaking world as Avicenna’s ‘Canon of Medicine’ was part of a recent London sale.

In any ‘top 10’ list of 30th birthday party themes, a 1980s or ‘90s leitmotif ranks high.

Target of a London silver specialist, this pair of late Victorian silver fluted vases was the best-seller at East Sussex auction house Burstow & Hewett (20% buyer’s premium).

Painted by Lt Gen Henry Hope Crealock (1831-91), this 6ft 8in (2m) wide pen and ink drawing is an eyewitness account of The Action of Bareilly – the battle of the last stronghold of Indian independence in 1858.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Codes are there to be broken, as the Second World War British team at Bletchley Park proved by cracking the German Enigma machines.

Topped by an eight-times estimate £19,500 Momoyama ‘Namban’ cabinet (ATG No 2391), Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood’s (21% buyer’s premium) sale in Exeter on April 16 had other estimate-busting lots from abroad.

An oil in gilt frame by John Thomas Serres (1759-1825) of 'The Entrance to Plymouth Sound' offered at Charles Miller’s (24% buyer’s premium) April 30 auction represented a primitive but effective early sat nav for ships.

A classic oil on canvas of yacht racing by renowned British painter Montague Dawson (1890-1973) was top-seller of The Marine Sale at Bonhams Knightsbridge (27.5/25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) on May 1.