Auctioneers

A DECADE after the Thurn und Taxis and Baden Baden sales in the 1990s, Sotheby’s are once again decamping to a German castle to stage another mammoth aristocratic auction.

Despite a substantial fall in total sales, increases in buyer’s premium and vendor’s commission margins helped Sotheby’s post record revenues for the second quarter of 2005.

Wintertons are moving out of the Lichfield Auction Centre as part of a plan to join their property and livestock divisions under one roof in a new auction centre.

Personnel changes are afoot in the silver departments of two of London’s major auction houses.

Bloomsbury Auctions report that their new departments have helped them achieve a 60 per cent rise in turnover year on year for the first half of 2005.

Strengthening their position as Ireland’s largest auction house, James Adam & Sons have been assigned the fine art business of major Dublin rival and property giant Hamilton Osborne King.

Long before J.R.R. Tolkien settled down to write The Hobbit, he had acquired a postcard reproduction of the ink, watercolour and gouache painting Der Berggeist (The Mountain Spirit).

THE unexpected success of the pair of library chairs discussed above led the way at the Wisborough Green saleroom, but there was keen action, mainly in the three-figure range, across the three days when 1800 lots were offered.

TWO lots stood out among the 600 lots offered at Hampshire. One was an 18th century matched pair of brass barrelled flintlock pistols signed Burnford, London, which, because of a missing ramrod and broken trigger mechanism were catalogued a/f but sold to a collector at a quadruple estimate £1600.

Sotheby’s are to link up with the Steinmetz Diamond Group to expand their current activities in the retail jewellery market.

“SELLING more lots but for less overall money” was the verdict of Lawrences valuer Howard Page after more than 2700 lots went under the hammer at the Surrey auctioneers’ marathon June event.

SOTHEBY’s are to launch a sale in January that will openly rely entirely upon dealers’ stock for its content.

Medieval French silver is not a plentiful commodity. Much of it did not escape the great post-Revolutionary meltdown, but one piece that got away was the late Gothic reliquary casket that featured in Sotheby’s works of art auction in London on June 8.

Two pieces of Yuan dynasty blue and white porcelain smashed coveted auction records in the UK salerooms last week.

Surrey auctioneers Ewbank are now offering a live online bidding service and held their first such sale on July 7.

Nantwich, Cheshire auctioneers Peter Wilson have completed work to a new entrance hall, right.

As celebrations abound for the most famous of all seamen, another great British admiral was being remembered in spectacular fashion at the Nottingham auction rooms of Mellors & Kirk on June 16. The subject of a fierce engagement between collectors was the so-called Rodney Jug.

LIKE so much material where the name is so much part of the game, the exquisite objets d’art fashioned in the Russian workshops of Carl Fabergé have attracted copyists, repro-producers and outright forgers.

IT was just three weeks into the First World War when British destroyers engaged the enemy off the Heligoland Bight near Denmark.

CLASS-action legal specialists Garden City Group (GCG) believe compensation cheques linked to the Sotheby’s/Christie’s collusion case will be sent out by August.