Auctioneers

Successful lots in a Bonhams New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) March 9 auction included, at $85,000 (£61,595), a letter that Einstein wrote to his son, Hans Albert, on the very day in September 1945 that the Second World War officially ended.

With species extermination very much in the news following the death of the world’s last male northern white rhino, there was added poignancy to a cased and stuff bird offered at Summers Place Auctions (25% buyer’s premium).

Only a few examples of the rare four-part British quad poster for the 1965 James Bond movie 'Thunderball' exist in uncut form.

A painting of Farnham High Street from 1794 by a little-known artist fetched a not-so-little £8500 at Woolley & Wallis.

Having for decades been like one of those obscure religions in which passionate believers go about their business to the benign bemusement of everyone else, studio pottery is winning converts by the day.

Harking back to when the Netherlands was a powerful player in the tea trade, a rare, early 18th century silver caddy attracted international interest at Halls (20% buyer’s premium) of Shrewsbury.

Made by William Selwood (1607-53), one of London’s finest clockmakers before the ‘Golden Age’, this 16½in (42cm) mid-17th century brass lantern clock topped Ewbank’s (22.5% buyer’s premium) spring sale in Send.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Marines and seascapes were a strong feature of Woolley & Wallis’ latest picture sale and, while there were plenty of affordable works on offer (see separate story), the sale was led by one of the larger works by a well-recognised name.

In a career of remarkable highs and lows, incorporating high political office, financial scandal and near bankruptcy, enormous success as a novelist and imprisonment for perjury during a libel case that he had won years earlier, Jeffrey Archer has himself been the subject of many a caricature and cartoon.

At some point in its life, an early photographically illustrated work on the art of wood turning offered in a recent Exeter sale had been converted for use as a postcard album, but it still sold for a four-times estimate £4300.

The English-born political theorist Thomas Paine lived through the most turbulent of times.

The 96-lot section of studio pottery offered at Woolley & Wallis’ (25% buyer’s premium) wide-ranging ceramics sale at Salisbury on March 21 included a private collection of the work of David Leach (1911-2005) and Walter Keeler (b.1942).

A collection of Outsider art produced in a former psychiatric hospital in north London will be offered for sale at Edinburgh auction house Lyon & Turnbull.