Auctioneers

Jonathan Pratt, among the best-known faces of the UK regional auction scene, is to leave Bellmans to become managing director of Dreweatts 1759.

A new auction record for a copy of a Viz comic was set during The Comic Book Sale at Anderson & Garland of Newcastle.

A coveted lot from the silver sale at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury on July 17 was an Edwardian Drew’s ‘Patent and Registered’ En Route picnic basket.

Not every Victorian silver tea and coffee service was sold for scrap in the great meltdown of 2011– when at one point the price reached almost £30 per oz.

Chosen as the front-cover illustration to Paul Atterbury and John Benjamin’s 'The Jewellery and Silver of HG Murphy' (2005), this gemset pendant also provided Woolley & Wallis’ latest Jewellery and Watches sale with its showcase lot.

Two high-quality works on paper made their presence felt at the top end of the Old Masters market during the latest series in London.

A rare set of four door panel promotional posters for 'Help!', the Beatles’ second film, will form part of a movie poster sale to be held by Heritage Auctions on July 28-29.

While good-quality but familiar Georgian silver such as entrée dishes, tureens and sauceboats estimated in the £6000-12,000 range met stiff resistance at Dorchester auction house Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) on June 28, two top-quality pieces made their money.

Swann Galleries is offering its largest-ever selection of posters promoting food and drink in the firm’s August 1 auction of vintage posters, with more than 75 examples available.

These outsize tongs, below, proved the major surprise at Adam’s (20% buyer’s premium) in Dublin on June 17.

As collecting evolves, many pieces of decorative, and historically captivating, Georgian silver are priced very keenly at both auction and retail.

The so-called auricular style – all organic fluid lines and asymmetrical shapes populated by marine invertebrates and reptiles – can first be found in the 1598 ornament book of Northern Mannerism, Architectura…, by Wendel Dietterlin of Stuttgart.

Pairs of Georgian candlesticks by the best-known London specialist makers such as William Cafe and Ebenezer Coker continue to sell well enough, as long as condition is acceptable.

An early Anglo-Dutch portrait of the swashbuckling English sea captain Sir Francis Drake topped Bonhams’ Old Master paintings sale on July 4 in New Bond Street. It sold for £290,000, just below its juicy £300,000-500,000 guide.

Auction houses in Bristol, Staffordshire and Norfolk have chosen to invest in new premises this year. Suggesting continued confidence in the regional auction market, Bristol Auction Rooms, Potteries Auctions and TW Gaze are planning to open new salerooms by the autumn.

This novelty silver scent bottle, below, appealing to two niche sections largely immune to the swings of the larger silver market, was a target for collectors when offered at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium).

Can endorsement by stars such as Beyoncé and Victoria Beckham boost the market?

Considering that Norwich was, after London, the largest and wealthiest city in England from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, its assay office (1562-1705) was comparatively shortlived. As such, secular silver produced in the city rarely appears on the market.