Auctioneers

A GOLD button which links the two most significant military figures in the foundation of the United States of America – George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette – will be sold in Leicestershire on November 1.

MADE in 17th century Gdansk or Königsberg at the very height of the amber working trade in Europe, this delicate chalice with silver-gilt mounts shot to £210,000 at Lawrences latest sale in Crewkerne, Somerset.

THE history of France’s famous Sleeper Car Company was commemorated in a single-owner sale at Christie’s in Paris last month.

COLLECTABLES specialists Stanley Gibbons have opened a new office in Hong Kong in a bid to stake a claim in the Asian market for coins, military medals, stamps and historical documents.

IN what promises to be the biggest test of the overall health of the Victorian picture market for some years, Lyon & Turnbull will sell the entire contents of Old Battersea House, the London home of the Forbes family, in Edinburgh on November 1.

THE existence of the elephant – “nature’s great masterpiece... the only harmless great thing”, to use John Donne’s famous description – was well known to medieval Europeans, but captive pachyderms had disappeared from the continent shortly after the demise of the Roman Empire.

As ever, there was a large amount of Doulton Lambeth on offer at Bonhams’ latest Ceramics Design sale.

Modern British art played its part in the recent London print sales when ‘The Merry-Go-Round’ by Cyril Power (1872-1951) drew strong bidding at Sotheby’s on September 27 and ‘Adonis in Y fronts’, a 1963 screenprint by Richard Hamilton (1922-2011), led the day at Christie’s South Kensington on September 20.

THE famous caricature birds crown the top of the tree for Martinware collectors. This is still a strong market where, feels Bonhams’ specialist Mark Oliver, a really top-calibre model could command £40,000 if it came on the market.

Becoming the most expensive painting ever sold in Ireland, A Fair Day, Mayo by Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957) was knocked down at €1m (£917,430) at Adam's lastest sale in Dublin.

THE thwack of the polo mallet was replaced by the repeated thud of the gavel earlier this month at the Cowdray estate in West Sussex, celebrated as one of the great British polo venues and the seat of the Viscount Cowdray.

The major houses’ latest New York Asian series highlighted the dominance of the Chinese art market.

ON a sparkling evening at Sotheby’s in Bond Street last Thursday, Henry Wyndham presided over a charity auction in aid of the Company of Arts Scholars, Dealers and Collectors’ charity fund, raising over £60,000 to support the education of young people seeking careers in all areas of the decorative arts from dealing and auctioneering to museums and galleries.

AUCTIONEERS Martel Maides of St Peter Port in Guernsey were amazed to encounter this Channel Islands silver table bell in a recent over-the-counter valuation.

THE largest 'Conjuring' sale seen in London for some time, at Bloomsbury Auctions on September 8, had at its core the 460-lot collection of the late Bob Read, a 'Close-Up Entertainer' and lecturer in the UK and USA who was a tireless researcher into the history of magic and conjuring.

CLAUDE Aguttes, the dynamic auctioneer with salerooms at Neuilly and Lyons, has been named president of a new conseil de surveillance or supervisory board to oversee the running of the Hôtel Drouot.

BONHAMS Scotland is to establish two new departments at its Edinburgh headquarters in Queen Street.

BILLED as the largest and most important country house auction of the year, Christie's three-day sale at Cowdray Park in West Sussex, netted £6.4m hammer against a £5m top estimate.

THERE is less than a year to go before the Olympic Games return to Britain for the third time and, rest assured, a number of themed auction sales are already in the pipeline.

Spink have acquired Swiss-based stamp auctioneers Investphila.