Auctioneers

ATG’s selection of hammer highlights over the past week.

A previously undocumented archive of writings by Edward Carpenter, the well-connected socialist poet and gay rights pioneer, sold for a hammer price of £4200, more than eight times its upper estimate, at Bamfords in Derby this month.

Edinburgh auction house Lyon & Turnbull will no longer sell antique items made from rhino horn.

Christie’s auction of the George Michael collection in London tonight was led by 'The Incomplete Truth' by Damien Hirst (b.1965), a work from 2006 featuring a dove in a tank of formaldehyde.

The art market focus in the Big Apple at the moment is on Asian works as Manhattan’s galleries and major auction houses stage the latest edition of ‘Asia Week New York’.

A rediscovered melody by Sir Edward Elgar will be offered at auction in Lichfield after it was found in an autograph book.

A small piece of Star Wars action figure history comes for sale at Vectis Auctions in Thornaby, Stockton-on-Tees next month.

It is not quite a full house in a game of cards, but Sotheby’s Made in Britain auction has dealt three ‘queens’ alongside works by British artists including David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, Dame Lucie Rie, Mary Fedden and Beryl Cook.

Sotheby’s is to offer what it deems “the most important work of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s celebrated career” as part of the Impressionist & Modern art evening sale in New York on May 14.

Two private collections of South African art have yielded works by some of the leading names in the market to Strauss’ sale in Cape Town on March 18.

Contemporary art from the collection of one of London’s oldest charities went on view last night ahead of Lyon & Turnbull’s inaugural Modern Made auction this month.

The art collection of singer and songwriter George Michael is being offered at Christie’s in a two-part auction this week. The lots will be divided between a 61-lot live sale at King Street in London on March 14 and a further 112 feature in an online timed sale that runs until March 15.

Sotheby’s held its very first auction on March 11, 1744, and today it is celebrating this 275-year milestone with the opening of an exhibition detailing its history in pictures.

Letters from Princess Diana written in the late 1980s and early 90s to a leading fashion magazine editor are coming to auction in New York.