Freeman's

Sale of 14th amendment document from 1867 coincides with Supreme Court case, happily for vendor

Top-lot honours in a summer sale of European furniture and decorative arts at Freeman’s (28% buyer’s premium) in Chicago went to a 1903 showpiece Martelé silver punch bowl by Gorham.

An oversize 1881 albumen photograph of Thomas Hill’s painting 'The Last Spike', depicting the instant of the creation of the first continental railroad in the US, rolled to a five-figure sum at Freeman’s (28% buyer’s premium) in Chicago.

The Age of Jazz figures issued in 1930 are among the most desirable of all Clarice Cliff models.

A Gorham Martelé silver punch bowl made for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St Louis sold for $120,000 (£89,700) at Freeman’s in Chicago.

Example dating to 1662 might have touted English master craftswoman’s skills

Original copper printing plates for works by famous artists do not appear often at auction, and rarely does a private collection come for sale.

When a Philadelphia family consigned Europa, a 1927 painting by Czech Modernist Josef Šíma (1891-1971), to Freeman’s (28/21% buyer’s premium) last year, it prompted scholars and art historians to do a double take.

Raised in Miami Beach, Stephen Farber’s distinguished medical career took him to New York, St Louis, Ann Arbor, Charlottesville, and Toledo. And along the way, he bought books.

Two years after a Wiltshire auction house set a record for Titanic memorabilia with ‘the watch recovered from the body of John Jacob Astor’ at £900,000, another timekeeper making precisely the same claim has sold in Chicago for $800,000 (£592,000).

Two years after a Wiltshire auction house set a record for Titanic memorabilia with “the watch recovered from the body of John Jacob Astor”, another timekeeper making precisely the same claim is coming to market.

The Plateelbakkerij Rozenburg (Royal Delftware Factory) was established in The Hague in 1883 in the hope of making blue and white tin-glazed earthenwares.

While nowhere near the level of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s work, later versions are still big sellers

American actor, singer, dancer, director, and photographer Joel Grey (b.1932) is perhaps best known for his portrayal of the master of ceremonies in both the Broadway and film versions of the musical Cabaret.