Auctioneers

Underpinned by bids from the internet, silver from beyond the British Isles is these days a stronger feature of provincial sales.

A 1782 first of James Stewart’s 'Plocacosmos: or, the Whole Art of Hair Dressing' illustrated with 10 plates showing hairstyles was offered as part of a Forum Auctions sale.

Researching Old Master paintings is sometimes likened to putting together the pieces of a jigsaw. But for one upcoming work, it seems this was quite literally the case.

A drawing offered at a Paris auction with an attribution to Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Francesco Penni (1488-1528) was hammered down at €1.13m (£980,000).

A large oil on panel map by MacDonald Gill celebrating the presence of stationer WH Smith on the British high street in the 1920s was hammered down at £50,000 in Gloucestershire.

At the turn of the 20th century, work by Italian émigré Andrew Grima (1921-2007) or the London jeweller Kutchinsky was on the periphery of the collecting world – still languishing in the bottom of jewellery boxes or, worse, the melting pot.

In the 1980s, the 3ft 7in x 2ft 9in (1.1m x 85cm) canvas of Saint Bartholomew being offered by Dorotheum in Vienna on April 30 was tentatively ascribed to Caravaggio. The treatment of light and shadow and the extreme naturalism in the portrayal certainly indicate a proximity to the revolutionary artist.

Estimated at just £50-80, an Alice Davis Hitchcock medallion sold for £3000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium) at a Spink auction in London on April 10.

This trio of clocks – all classic collectors’ pieces – went well above estimate at spring sales.

Despite the general controversy about the material – one that has momentarily taken a back seat as Brexit eats parliamentary time – an exceptional ivory work of art still has the capacity to impress in the saleroom.