Auctioneers

Mark Law’s deal to buy auction firm Dreweatts and the Mallett brand from stamp dealer group Stanley Gibbons has collapsed.

Triple lens or Triunial magic lanterns were the iPhone 8 of their day. Since the days of the Sturm lantern in the 17th century, the technology had developed from basic projectors producing small, dimly lit images, to these magnificent machines capable of spectacular technicolour lantern entertainments.

A US judge has ordered Christie’s to identify the winning bidder of the $12.5m (£9.7m) Guennol Stargazer, an ancient Anatolian idol auctioned in New York in April.

As weapons of war, swords have an impressively long history, as demonstrated by recent auctions around the world. From two £11,000 Viking swords at Bonhams in London to General Patton’s 1945 presentation sabre at Hermann Historica (€54,000/£47,370), there were centuries of warfaring history on view, including blades from Japan, Korea and Greece.

Two American presentation swords, marking high points in two very different military careers, made their mark in recent sales.

Cased pairs of pistols remain a particular favourite with collectors, being relatively compact and often in excellent condition after centuries cocooned in their brass-bound mahogany boxes.

Thomas Del Mar (24% buyer’s premium) sold the first instalment of de-accessioned arms and armour from the John Woodman Higgins Museum in Massachusetts back in 2013 and a second in 2014.

The collection of Clarice Cliff formed by André Aerne, a voice professor at Butler University in the US who died last year, will be offered in an online sale at Christie’s this month.

MADAM – Our estimate (£2000-4000) for Drummond’s Death of Nelson did indeed prove to be conservative but not quite as dismissive as the ‘£100-150’ quoted in the ATG might suggest (Bid Barometer, ATG No 2302).

After a 23-year career at Christie’s, where he was a director and international specialist in Asian art, Jeremy Morgan has joined Woolley & Wallis.

The art market is “neither frothy nor depressed”, according to Sotheby’s chief executive Tad Smith.

Leading a 75-lot Brontë collection sold by Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 10* was a set of two of the novels written by the sisters in the hugely productive years of 1846-47.

Tim Goodman, former chairman of Sotheby’s Australia, is to relaunch his online auction house Fine Art Bourse (FAB) this month.

For many years auctioneers have been itching to move the finest arms and armour from the province of the specialist collector and establish them with a wider audience as works of art in their own right.

More 19th century art was offered in London when over 120 lots of European and Orientalist pictures went under the hammer at Christie’s.

The summer season brought a raft of modern art sales to continental Europe and the various salerooms around Germany were no exception.