Auctioneers

Personal and unique insights into warfare score highly at auction. So it proved at Cambridge firm Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) in The Connoisseurs Sale on July 6, when a journal revealing the private thoughts of a Second World War fighter ace credited with more enemy ‘kills’ than any other British pilot doubled the top estimate to sell for £16,000.

Back in December 1962, a Yorkshire show promoter booked a new Liverpool band to play at Harrogate’s Royal Hall on the strength of their first record which had charted at No 17 a couple of months earlier.

Medals and orders can be heavy things. So what better way to carry around your various hard-earned gongs than a one-size-fits-all miniature version of them all?

Operations behind enemy lines was the theme linking two special forces medals groups sold by London auction house Spink (20% buyer’s premium) on July 26.

London dealership Marchant is to sell Chinese artworks at a dedicated auction in New York.

Considering there were only 150 men defending Rorke’s Drift against the Zulus, an impressive number of medals awarded after that epic 1879 encounter have come to auction recently.

Chiswick Auctions is to open its South Kensington showroom manned by a group of former Christie’s staff early next month.

The highlight of Lyon & Turnbull’s sale of Scottish Silver & Applied Arts on August 16 was a Jacobite drinking glass with a difference.

In the days when loved ones in the armed forces would head abroad on service for up to several years, not knowing when or if they would return, ‘sweetheart’ brooches were a way of remembering them.

The British Museum’s big summer exhibition on Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai is over, but more art from the Land of the Rising Sun is in the offing (also see International Events, ATG No 2305).

A large oil painting offered at auction for first time depicts notorious figure from Charles II’s court and sells for five times top estimate.

A 1765 first of John L Cowley’s The theory of perspective demonstrated… sold for £17,000 by Christie’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 12 appears to be the only first edition recorded at auction.

The surprise package of Sworders’ (22% buyer’s premium) Homes and Interiors sale of August 1 was an early buff stoneware jug of a type commonly associated with the potteries of Fulham and Vauxhall.

The wide-ranging summer sale at Ilkley saleroom Hartleys (15% buyer’s premium) on June 14 left auctioneer Andrew Hartley in an upbeat mood. He could look back on “some high prices in most areas, and in particular the furniture section showed early signs of a market waking up for items right across the board”.

A 19th century oak snuff box offered at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne on July 11 was inset with copper and inscribed Made from the wreck of the Betsy Cains which brought King William to England 1688 and A.Reed Esq. Mayor 1827.