Auctioneers

An exceptionally rare Western Zhou bronze, taken when the Summer Palace was sacked by British troops in 1860, has been discovered in a house in a Kent seaside town.

Lyon & Turnbull has appointed Philip Smith, former head of modern & post-war art and design at Mallams, to the newly created role of associate director for modern art and design.

More than $120m of Asian art was sold at auction during last week’s New York Asia Week.

An American private collector bid £15,000 for a rare Clarice Cliff figure group at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury.

While many a hopeful vendor has to be told gently that great-great-grandpa’s pocket watch is worth little more than the melt price of the metal, a complication or major name – such as the signature Ch. Frodsham, London to the movement of this example, below – makes all the difference.

Considering retiring and selling up, the owner of a Cornish B&B owner consigned the George III, japanned chest on stand, below, to Honiton saleroom Chilcotts (19.5% buyer’s premium) to test the market.

Pictured and discussed here is a selection of interesting and unusual lots from sales in February and early March, ranging from a Russian enamel jug in Saarbruecken and an aristocratic de Lászlo portrait in Heidelberg to an early Grand Tour souvenir in cork in Cologne.

Porcelain by Jacob Petit (1797-1868) is a scarce sight at provincial rooms.

Among Horace Hone’s (1756-1825) most renowned depictions was the 18th century actress Sarah Siddons.

None of the works by the Elizabethan poet, courtier and soldier Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86) were actually published in his lifetime.

'Busman’s Honeymoon: A Love Story with Detective Interruptions' was the 11th and last of the Dorothy L Sayers books featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.

Aldine press books of the early 16th century, mostly it seems in a good but much later full morocco or calf bindings, produced a number of the higher bids in a recent Yorkshire sale.

The essential guide to the German auction world - 10 things to know

“It’s not the age or pedigree – it’s the look of the piece.” The phrase became less a heresy and more a cliché during the latter years of the furniture boom of blessed memory, when the increasingly influential decorator trade was spending substantial sums on 19th and early 20th century reproductions.

On the Baroque façade of Girona Cathedral in Catalonia stands the figures of Saint Joseph and Saint James, carved in the 1960s by local sculptor Anton Casamor (1907-79).

Like Romeo and Juliet, Hellelil and Hildebrand’s relationship was doomed from the start.