Auctioneers

THE Robert Jones and Son second model corkscrew is perhaps the most desirable of all of the many Victorian patent corkscrews.

SETTING a new auction high for English furniture, this commode of c.1770 was knocked down for £3.35m earlier this month.

LIMITED interest on the two star lots meant the best contests at this month’s Old Master series in London came for more attractively pitched works by less familiar names.

UNEARTHED in a Scottish attic, this exceptional 17th century map, depicting old fishing settlements in Canada and North America is expected to attract international interest when offered at auction in Somerset in January.

AT Sotheby's sale in New Bond Street on December 7, a copy of John James Audubon's Birds of America set a new auction record for any printed book when it sold to the London art dealer Michael Tollemache for £6.5m (plus premium).

LAUNCHED by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak from the garage of Jobs’ parents home in July, 1976 – a month in which America’s bicentennial celebrations were the big news story – the Apple I was in fact the start of another revolution.

THE Arctic weather that struck the UK last week caused severe disruption during one of the busiest periods in the calendar for the art and antiques trade.

CONFIRMING their intentions in the Australian market, Bonhams have launched an Aboriginal art department in Sydney.

IN the week when dealer John Hobbs was due to meet his former restorer a London court, Dreweatts have announced they will be selling his stock at auction in December.

THIS exceptional Napoleonic French prisoner of war model proved the highlight of the latest sale conducted by Clevedon Salerooms, near Bristol.

LIGHT has been shed on the £52,000 price tag awarded an oak and gilt-bronze coffer on stand at a Sworders Interiors sale.

THE Professional Footballers Association were active at Spink's latest sale, successfully bidding £210,000 to acquire a Great War Victoria Cross group awarded to Second Lieutenant D.S. Bell, Yorkshire Regiment.

NOBLE Investments, the parent company of coin and medal specialists Baldwins, have acquired the stock, reference library and client database of Sussex-based stamp dealers Leo Baresch Limited for an undisclosed sum.

HELPED by the boom in Chinese works of art, UK regional salerooms continue to rewrite the record books. Following the £43m vase at Bainbridges of Ruislip, Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis posted two more seven-figure sums for jades.

SOTHEBY’S set a new auction record for a jewel in Geneva when a 24.78-carat fancy intense pink diamond sold to London jeweller Laurence Graff at SFr40.5m (£25.6m) plus premium.

THE unexpected highlight of a recent sale conducted by Surrey auctioneers Lawrences of Bletchingley was this Anglo-Indian rosewood and ivory inlaid butterfly form jewellery box entered for sale from a local private source.

IT measures over 11ft (3.4m) wide and stands 11ft 6in (3.5m) high, was built in Melbourne and is carved over the entire surface with figure and details emblematic of the foundation and history of the state of Victoria.

A small auction house in Ruislip has shattered the world auction record for a Chinese work of art by taking £43m for a vase consigned to their warehouse auction room as part of a house clearance from a bungalow in Pinner.

INCREASING revenues at Sotheby’s have given a further indication of the recovering art market. The company’s latest set of results shows a major turnaround for the first nine months of 2010, going from a loss of around $80m for the equivalent period in 2009 to a profit of $64.7m.

THE price of $56.5m (£36.9m) seen for Andy Warhol's The Men in Her Life at Phillips de Pury's evening sale, meant that for the first time in a New York Contemporary art auction series the top lot did not come from Sotheby's or Christie's.