Auctioneers

Sold at £620 in a July 2 sale held by Hansons (20% buyer’s premium) was a leather-bound promotional catalogue issued by the Walturdaw Cinema Supply Co of Birmingham.

The first stand-alone British and European sculpture sale to be held by Dreweatts (24% buyer’s premium) was a solid-enough affair to justify department head Cristian Beadman’s belief that there is an exploitable gap in the market.

Two depictions of the Madonna painted some 400 years apart were among the highlights of a dedicated sale of pictures at Dreweatts (24% buyer’s premium) in Donnington Priory in Berkshire.

It’s a rare sale these days at which an English furniture standard challenges quality Chinese pieces for price, but the top end of the trade certainly rated a 6ft 3in (1.9m) William and Mary walnut and featherbanded bureau cabinet offered by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

Preparatory and other unused drawings relating to Roald Dahl classics come to auction

Just as fine English mahogany is selling below par, Chinese furniture, particularly in the desirable huanghuali hardwood, is booming.

A selection of fine or unusual bindings seen at auction during the summer months will feature more prominently in a future issue, but shown here is a 1751 first of Thomas Gray’s An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard in a striking later binding that was among lots offered at Chiswick Auctions (25/12% buyer’s premium) on July 12.

Part of the intake for a general sale, a terracotta sculpture by a protégé of Antonio Canova sold for £21,000 (plus premium) at Reeman Dansie in Colchester.

A small but enigmatic study attributed to Victorian artist Matthew Ridley Corbet (1850-1902) drew dramatic competition at John Nicholson’s in Fernhurst, Surrey.

It was not only in London that Eastern daggers made a big impression in UK auctions this summer.

On the day that the Bastille was stormed Louis XVI famously recorded “rien” (nothing) in his game book.

Two French corkscrews were the top lots of Henry Aldridge & Son’s auction of the first tranche of a single-owner collection of around 450 examples.

Signed in gold to the 10in (25cm) damascus barrels Manton London, the best-known name among London gunsmiths, a cased pair of 25-bore flintlock duelling pistols led the specialist arms and armour sale held by Antony Cribb (22% buyer’s premium) at Abingdon on July 24.

It has not been a vintage season for armour in the saleroom, but some of the recent highlights from London and Munich are shown here.

June and July brought a rich crop of auctions in London, around the country and overseas. A few of those sales and stand-out results have already been reported on these and the ATG news pages, but many more hammer highlights were achieved.