Auctioneers

The arts of the Ottoman court are performing strongly in the marketplace. The unexpected highlight of Lyon & Turnbull’s Five Centuries auction in Edinburgh on February 5 was an Ottoman saddle.

This large and imposing portrait of Pauline Bonaparte, the younger sister of Napoleon, sold for$310,000 (£238,700) in New York last week.

Three Lalique glass panels designed for the dining car of the Côte d’Azur Pullman Express train in 1928 will be offered at auction next week. The Joint Special Managers of Thomas Cook Group are the vendors.

The George Medal awarded to a brave boxer who stepped in to foil a kidnap attempt on Princess Anne is up for auction at Dix Noonan Webb in London with an estimate of £15,000-20,000 on March 4-5.

The latest Impressionist & Modern auctions in London posted the lowest total for a February series in this category for a decade.

A remarkable collection of books from The Birmingham Assay Office Library will be offered at Forum Auctions in London on March 26.

Gustav Detring (1842-1913) and Constantin von Hanneken (1854-1925) were two of the most influential Germans living and working in China in the late 19th century.

Two very different lots helped Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) to boost its first major sale of the year.

A UK auction record for a copper coin was set on September 24 when a rare Edward VIII 1937 pattern penny sold at Spink for £111,000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium). The coin was made as a trial, ahead of the king’s abdication in December 1936, and was never released for circulation.

The complete original artworks for two of Edward Ardizzone’s much-loved children’s books were sold for £30,000 apiece at Bonhams (27.5/25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium).

Judith Howard (1945-2019), collector, part-time dealer, museum curator, author, TV expert and lecturer, was a self-confessed ‘maximalist’. Every shelf and wall space in her Wiltshire end-of-terrace was there to be filled. Dusting was a chore reserved for just one day a year.

A good range of 18th and 19th century English ceramics is included in Skinner’s February 14 sale of European furniture and decorative arts in Boston.

This early-20th century snow scene, below, was painted by the French artist Paul Elie Gernez (1888-1948). He was primarily a naturalist painter of still-lives, landscapes and seascapes, and spent much of his life in Honfleur in Normandy.