Auctioneers

A newly discovered Ottoman charger described as one of the most important pieces of Iznik pottery remaining in private hands was the toast of Islamic Week, selling at Sotheby’s for a spectacular £4.55m (£5.4m including buyer’s premium).

Included in the Important Design sale at Phillips in London on October 18 was an unusual mantel clock designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869- 1944).

Two secular icons of pre- and post-Revolutionary Russia provided the highlights at Lockdales (18% buyer’ s premium) of Ipswich.

Heading the 800 lots of silver which opened the three-day sale at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) in Crewkerne was a 11¼in (28.5cm) tall flagon by Thomas Walker, Dublin, c.1750-60.

Netsuke from the collection of ceramicist and author Edmund de Waal, made famous by the 2010 memoir 'The Hare with the Amber Eyes', go under the hammer in London.

Bigger and better sales for Midlands and Surrey auctioneers and a successful debut auction for the new York venture Duggleby Stephenson (17.5% buyer’s premium) made for an encouraging start to autumn.

Rare appearance for quirky artist results in keen competition for work in trademark frame.

The current demand for female artists was in evidence at Henry Adams (20% buyer’s premium) of Chichester when a work by Evelyn Ince (1886-1941) went under the hammer.

Published in 1962, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was the first book in a popular series of lupine tales by Joan Aiken (1924-2004), a prolific and prize-winning author whose specialities included the supernatural and children’s books that involved an elaborate, alternative history of Britain.

All rather slim – one in fact a single sheet broadside – the three items noted here were all part of a Bonhams New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of September 25 and, spanning some 80 years, all bear Boston imprints.

The appearance of the 19th century Meissen figure based on Kaendler’s original Count Bruhl’s Tailor begins to bring to mind Monty Python’s Green Knight as he rides undaunted into UK auctions despite his increasingly battered state.

Provenance proved the key component for two paintings that achieved multi-estimate sums at Bonhams (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) in London.

An auctioneer from Dreweatts made the final of this year’s NAVA Propertymark Novice Auctioneer of the Year competition.

A handful of copies of Robert Morden’s 'Geography Rectified, or a Description of the World' have made a little more at auction than a 1680 copy offered in a Stacey’s (24% buyer’s premium) sale of September 10 – but all bar one of them were second or third editions of 1688 and 1693.