Auctioneers

A collection of market-fresh pictures with a distinctive Surrealist streak found favour with buyers at Charterhouse (21% buyer’s premium) in Dorset.

“No one can rival Thomas Cole for engraving in the 19th century,” said director Jamie South after this exhibition-quality carriage clock sold for £26,000 (plus 20% premium) at Gardiner Houlgate in Horsham, Bath, on October 25. It went to an American buyer towards the top end of the estimate.

Earlier works in an October 18 sale held by Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) included a scarce 1688 first of Randle Holme’s The Academy of Armory, or a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon, an heraldic work by the third member of a distinguished Chester family of heraldic painters and genealogists to bear that name. It made £1200.

A Nobel prize-winner’s gold medal awarded to a British scientist is to go under the hammer in Hollywood as part of Julien’s Auctions sale on November 17.

As auction houses expand their specialist sales programmes, separate departments can also develop if the volume of business is worth it. Not many have a dedicated single-owner department, however.

A mid-19th century scrimshaw carved whalebone walking cane sold for a house record of £17,000 (plus 18% buyer’s premium) at East Bristol Auctions on November 9.

Forum Auctions has expanded its modern and contemporary prints and editions department with two new appointments.

This archetypal still-life by Cecil Kennedy (1905-97) topped Halls’ (20% buyer’s premium) £300,000 auction on October 18.

A brief letter of 1864 in which Ulysses S Grant agrees to General William T Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’, a bold plan to destroy Atlanta, then march across Georgia to Savannah or Charleston during the American Civil War, sold for $100,000 (£75,755) on October 19, at Heritage Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Dallas.

A collection of tobacco leaf pattern Chinese export porcelain surpassed all expectations to sell for a combined £116,000 at Mallams Cheltenham (20% buyer’s premium).

Sotheby’s From Earth To Fire sale in Bond Street on November 1 was topped by a kunstkammer object with a Rothschild provenance.

Bonhams’ Important Design sale in Bond Street on October 25 included this George III mahogany hall settee in the manner of William and John Linnell. Estimated at £8000- 12,000, it sold at £140,000 (plus premium), writes Roland Arkell.