Auctioneers

Dutch maritime charts feature in wide-ranging auction strong in travel and exploration.

It was only a matter of time before a treasure from the hot new British ceramics market emerged out of nowhere and onto the rostrum in the long tradition of boom areas.

Individually, watches which the War Office commissioned from 12 Swiss makers during the Second World War are not as highly rated as other military watches – but as a set they are a holy grail for British collectors.

Mod Brit and contemporary selection showing a swirl of influences ‘creates a buzz’.

Old hangars and even older tents provided two of the more successful categories in a recent three-day, 1600-lot sales week in South Cerney.

A trio of unsigned First World War prints by CRW Nevinson (1889-1946) sold for multi-estimate sums in a two-day sale at Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) in Cirencester.

Of all the things you might expect to find in a kitchen cupboard, an original oil by Edward Seago (1910-74) is probably not one of them.

One of Dorotheum’s specialities is its staging of sales devoted to imperial court memorabilia and historical objects, which are notable for featuring souvenirs and personal memorabilia from the House of Hapsburg.

Searching online for the term ‘skirt lifter’ is probably unwise in the public domain, but an intriguing item sold at Graham Budd’s latest auction shows it is a popular collecting field.

Among several runaway lots at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) Asian Art sale in Dorchester was a 19th century Indian watercolour depicting the Mughal Emperor Akbar II on an elephant.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

An original typescript for Boris Pasternak’s most famous novel Doctor Zhivago with handwritten corrections by the author was sold for £110,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) at Forum Auctions.

This canvas of the martyrdom of St Sebastian by the Italian Baroque artist Mattia Preti (1613-99) is closely related to one of his most famous works of the same subject, in the Capodimonte Museum in Naples.

In the early development of motion pictures, this Kinora viewer, below, was the high end of the hugely popular ‘flip-book’ film machines.