Auctioneers

Estimated at £400-600, a Chinese porcelain vase was bid to £1.3m at an auction in Hampshire last week.

This Italian marble bust of an emperor, catalogued as 17th century after the antique, provided a moment of saleroom drama at Sworders’ Fine Interiors auction in Stansted on September 10.

George du Maurier (1834-96) joined the staff at Punch magazine in 1865, drawing two ink cartoons a week until his eyesight deteriorated in 1891. His most common targets were the affected manners of Victorian society and Britain’s growing middle class in particular.

A gold, jade and rock crystal model of a sedan chair by Fabergé was hammered down at £380,000 last week – a new house record for a Gloucestershire auctioneer.

Sotheby’s opened its September Asia Week auctions in New York on September 10 with the $8.3m sale of Chinese art consigned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Entered by a vendor who hated them, a pair of 6in (15.5cm) long 19th century nutcrackers reflected in their way two different aspects of auctioneering today: how smaller country firms see their future and what will happen to antique ivory items when most of the trade in them is banned.

A busier than usual summer for the local housing market appeared to boost both vendor consignments and bidding at Market Harborough auctioneers Gildings (18% buyer’s premium).

The second published work of the ‘flower book lady’ has no other auction appearance

Hindman Auctions will be selling a Midwestern collector’s ensemble of rare books in an 85 lot auction in Chicago on November 5.

A pocket globe with some areas still a mystery leads a maritime auction at Exeter saleroom Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood.

Pitched at £500-800, this grand sonnerie carriage clock came with little information for bidders at Jacobs & Hunt’s (22% buyer’s premium) sale in Liss other than plentiful illustrations and the name C Marcks & Co, Bombay and Poona engraved to the silvered dial.

Freeman’s enjoys a strong Scottish connection, embodied in the firm’s current chairman, Edinburgh-born Alasdair Nichol, whose accent has diluted not one jot in the 25 years he has lived and worked in the US.

A portrait of an unidentified young man by the 18th century French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) will feature in the auction to be held by Skinner in Boston on September 27.

Estimated at just £40-60, this ebonised wood and alabaster table casket sold to a bidder using thesaleroom.com for £1600 at Peter Francis (20% buyer’s premium) of Carmarthen on August 28.

A model example of trans-European trucking, this diecast van advertising a Swiss company was made in Italy and sold to a German buyer at the Runcorn rooms of British Toy Auctions (18% buyer’s premium).

A final selection of works from the London summer sale of books from the Fox Pointe Manor library* includes a gruesome account of London’s ‘Great Plague’.

A single-owner collection of 27 pieces of Martin Brothers art pottery will be included in the Design sale series to be held by Rago auctions in Lambertville, New Jersey.