Auctioneers

An autographed letter signed from Charlotte Brontë doubled its estimate to make £24,000 at Lyon & Turnbull’s September 4 rare books, maps and manuscripts sale in Edinburgh.

With the Royal Academy opening a major show of Australian art in London on September 21, Christie’s will hope the added attention on this sector will yield benefit at their specialist sale being held in the Capital the week after.

A remarkable archive of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s personal property makes its second visit to the auction room in less than a decade this month when it is offered by Heritage Auctions in New York.

Speculation over the future of Sotheby’s has been rife since Wall Street hedge fund billionaire Daniel Loeb’s firm Third Point announced it had acquired a 5.7% stake in the firm.

Christie’s, the first international auction house to be granted a licence to operate independently in mainland China, have announced the date of their first auction.

Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions are to hold a pilot sale of Contemporary Chinese art in partnership with Yourun International (UK) Art Investment & Management Ltd, a London-based arts and cultural institution specialising in promoting emerging Chinese artists.

Is this the rarest of all Star Wars figures? The figure known by collectors as the Vinyl Cape Jawa was one of the original series of a dozen figures that accompanied the release of the film in 1978 (jawas are the hooded creatures with glowing eyes who buy and sell droids).

A number of oil paintings by Sir Kyffin Williams (1918-2006) gave a major fillip to Rogers Jones’ first sale in their new Cardiff saleroom. The results included the highest price ever seen for one of his works sold at auction.

This Scottish provincial George II communion cup topped Lyon & Turnbull’s latest silver sale in Edinburgh.

Cheshire saleroom Frank Marshall of Knutsford set a new house record when this massive 17th or 18th century Sino-Tibetan gilt bronze statue of Guanyin sold for £126,000.

The battleground is Tibet. Invading troops massacre poorly armed peasant soldiers standing bravely in their way, doomed to defeat against a much more powerful, modern opponent.

A printed broadside from 1791 that gained visitors admission to Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, the home of Whig politician Horace Walpole, came up at auction this month and sold at £2000.

Global sales for the first half of 2013 at Sotheby’s totalled $3.14bn (£2.05bn), their latest set of results reveal.

Estimated at £10,000-15,000, this silver-gilt and ivory guilloché enamel desk clock by Carl Fabergé sold for £65,000 at George Kidner in Lymington, Hampshire.

A 1937 oil painting by LS Lowry which he made while on holiday in Scotland will be offered at Bonhams next sale of Modern British and Irish art in London on November 20.

Heritage Auctions of Dallas, Texas, are claiming a new auction record for an insert movie poster.

The country house sale of the summer, Bonhams’ on-site, two-day auction of the contents of Trelissick House in Cornwall, including The Copeland China collection of Spode, totalled £2.06m, with every lot sold.

Herefordshire was judged a little too remote for most Midlands industrialists seeking a rural retreat in the Arts and Crafts idiom.

A medal given to a remarkable sailor who was given the honour of conveying Napoleon to exile in Elba in 1813 as a reward for his daring exploits in the Royal Navy has made a record price.

For the second time in a decade, on August 10, Heritage in Dallas will offer for sale the prototype of the original GI Joe figure.