Auctioneers

Edinburgh’s Royal College of Surgeons was the venue on the evening of October 29 for the sale by Thomson, Roddick and Medcalf of four important and original wallpaper designs by William Morris (1834-1896).

EC fine Sotheby’s £13m – Christie’s escape penalty: THE US courts have given the go-ahead for compensation settlements to be paid in Sotheby’s and Christie’s $512m price fixing case. The green light came last week after the 90-day appeal period set by the US Supreme Court expired with no challenge to the ruling.

Few historic characters are guaranteed to generate more interest than the one-armed, one-eyed figure of Britain’s most celebrated admiral, Lord Nelson. Sotheby’s (19.5/10% buyer’s premium), Bond Street, 93-lot auction of Nelson memorabilia from the Alexander Davison collection sold on Trafalgar Day (October 21) to a room so packed that buyers had to spill over into an adjacent gallery.

The fastest growing area of the jewellery market, mourning apparel has become “hot property in the past 12 months”, says Jethro Marles of Bearne’s. Pointedly excepting the sort of heavy black jewellery produced in large quantities during the post-Albert period, he says that the material that has doubled in value over the past year is the earlier, more delicate mourning jewellery of the sort shown right.

The COINEX week of sales was kicked off by Dix Noonan Webb with a 1928-lot sale on a long October 8. This marathon took ten hours to disperse, making a total of £483,639; this, exults Chris Webb, was their best ever sale.

The second-eleven sale that followed on from Christie’s main Islamic auction, was held in their South Kensington rooms on October 18, with 324 of its 417 lots changing hands, and saw the highest take-up of all the sales in this autumn’s series.

Pick of the Bligh relics sold at Christies King Street last month was the cup that he used to hold his meagre rations of bread and water, a coconut shell that bears his incised initials, the date April 1789 and, inscribed in ink around the rim, the words “The Cup I eat my miserable allowance of”.

Over the last 10 to 15 years, the market has undergone a slow but steady shift towards 20th century painting in particular the Post-War abstraction of the St Ives school whose geometric shapes and pure blocks of colour are wholly in tune with contemporary tastes.

Glittering personalities from the world of arts, they were the toast of Paris in the late 1960s. Capote and Sagan, Karajan and Nureyev, Callas and Saint-Laurent – their presence at soirées was coveted by the self-regarding hostesses across town, but they all paid homage to the ultimate hostess trolley when they arrived for dinner at 10 rue de Dragon.

The firm of Wright & Mansfield (1860-86) are often cited as the instigators of the Georgian Revival and, unlike many of their contemporaries who produced Victorian pastiches of earlier styles, are renowned for their craftsmanship, using high quality materials for accurate recreations of the Adam and Sheraton style – often difficult to distinguish from the 18th century originals.

In the same week that their South Kensington rooms offered the first instalments from Margaret Cadman’s mammoth collection Christie’s King Street (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) rooms were busy selling the second part of the Dr KH Wadsack Collection of Berlin porcelain.

This full dress uniform of an officer from the Duke of Wellington’s West Riding regiment, right, was an important diversion from the main proceedings at Duke’s auction in Dorchester. Under normal circumstances this would have been a standard lot of textile militaria for the trade, but this uniform actually belonged to the sixth Duke of Wellington and had passed by descent to the vendor.

On October 4, Christie’s New York sold the Harvey Plotnick Library on ‘The History of Quantum Physics and the Theory of Relativity’ for a premium-inclusive total of $1.78m (£1.15m).

Shot by a sniper when aboard HMS Victory at the crowning moment of his career, Admiral Lord Nelson is without doubt Britain’s finest maritime hero. When news of his death, after triumping at the Battle of Trafalgar, reached London George III made the decision to break with tradition and give Nelson a state funeral.

THERE were cows aplenty, but only one beef, at Sotheby’s Olympia on Thursday night, when 60 bovine belles did their bit for charity. The high-profile heifers, whom you may have seen grazing the streets of London through the summer, were the first tranche of the Cow Parade sale – another 90 are due to be offered soon on the Internet.

Sotheby’s break mould in bid to lure Germans: A little piece of history was made on October 8 and 9 when Sotheby’s four-part dispersal of the Beck Collection of 20th Century German and Austrian art became the first major sale ever to be conducted in euros in a London auction room.

The extensive press coverage given over to the conflict in Afghanistan may have helped re-focus collectors’ attentions on the magnificent Gandharan sculpture produced in this troubled region in the second and third centuries AD.

After the spectacular HK$37m (£3,394,495) price bid for the Yongzheng (1723-35) peach vase in Sotheby’s Hong Kong May 7 sale, their New York rooms had high hopes for this yellow ground famille rose double gourd vase, Qianlong period (1736-95), consigned by the same private US vendor, in their Chinese outing on September 19. They were not disappointed by the outcome.

Chinese Classic Furniture – The Dr S.Y. Yip Collection: It may come as a surprise to some to learn that the Ming dynasty’s minimalist huanghuali furniture has traditionally been more prized in the West than it has been in the East.

Clocks, Watches and Wristwatches: There was a solid performance for the 288 lots of Clocks, Watches and Wristwatches offered by Sotheby’s Olympia (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on September 19 marred only by the failure of the potential best seller, the 18th century English musical and automaton clock attributed to James Cox, London.c.1775.