Auctioneers

The drive by, among others, the Royal Academy and the National Gallery to promote women’s importance in art would have required little effort had campaigners looked at the world of modern ceramics.

For many years New York’s major salerooms mounted auction series of Old Master paintings, drawings and sculpture in the first months of the year immediately following their Americana series.

Illustrations offered as part of an online Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium) sale held in early December included a couple of Arthur Rackhams.

Inscribed to a fellow dramatist, a presentation copy of the 1933 first of Nathaniel West’s classic black comedy, Miss Lonelyhearts, did exceptionally well at Christie’s New York (25/20/12.5%).

A previously unrecorded teabowl and saucer attributed to a pioneering American porcelain factory is expected to bring a six-figure sum when offered for sale in Salisbury next month.

Auctions on New Year’s Day are a tradition in regional North America. The sale at Nadeau’s in Windsor, Connecticut, on the first day of 2019 included a collection of 17th and 18th century English silver that had been given to Yale University in 1896 in memory of a former alumnus, the Pennsylvania coal baron James Browne Neale.

Serendipity had it that three early pieces of European pottery and glass – two of them dated – were offered for sale across a trio of English regional auctions in a matter of days in December.

At the very end of the 15th century, in Venice in December 1499, there emerged from the presses of that city’s most famous printer, Aldus Manutius, what is traditionally described as the most beautiful illustrated printed book of the Italian Renaissance.

Bound as two volumes in contemporary red morocco gilt, its plates and plans finely coloured and gilt heightened throughout, an exceptional example of Joan Blaeu’s celebrated 17th century townbook of the Netherlands was offered in a recent American sale.

Since 1994, the New York businessman Richard Baron Cohen has been a welcome guest at international auctions, fairs and dealers.

Painted as a birthday gift, a portrait of one of the more popular characters in the annals of American children’s literature, Eloise, sold for $80,000 (£62,675) at Bonhams New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on December 5.