Auctioneers

Rising costs in the wake of the government ban on credit card fees are forcing auctioneers to end card transactions or consider raising buyer’s premium.

Catalogued simply as ‘a pair of English soft-paste porcelain models of parrots’, these rare 18th century figures by Bow sold at Thomas Watson in Darlington, County Durham, for £16,000 (plus 24% buyer’s premium) on May 15.

Two targets for clockwork toy car collectors on the occasions they appear at auction are the CIJ Alfa Romeo P2 racing car and the Gunthermann model of Captain Campbell’s Blue Bird. Good examples of both came up for sale recently.

Guided at £200-400, a pair of 17th century British school portraits (one pictured below) went on to fetch £1150 each at Halls (20% buyer’s premium) of Shrewsbury.

A quartet of weapons with fascinating histories sold recently at regional UK auctions.

Three modestly valued works in regional sales.

Bearing a title that translates as ‘The Book of Correction of Optics for those who have Sight and Mind’, an early 14th century Arabic manuscript made a much higher than expected £450,000 during the recent Islamic week of sales in London.

Fellows has expanded its London presence with a new office in a Georgian townhouse in Mayfair which will allow an improved viewing schedule for auction previews.

Whatever the collective noun is for carriage-driving enthusiasts is – a whip-round? – they were gathered from across Europe for the dispersal of the collection of the UK’s doyenne of the carriage trade.

Offered as part of a recent online sale, a scarce work by Walter Savage Landor that had remained unsold in a New Bond Street auction only last July finally achieved, on April 25 of this year, the high-estimate sum of £2400 that both salerooms had been looking for.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Not, perhaps, the face modern eyes would immediately think of captivating an emperor, but this porcelain plaque portrait of Napoleon’s first wife, Josephine, was one of a number of major attractions at Canterbury Auction Galleries’ (24% buyer’s premium) Spring Sale.

Private buying carried away two top-selling works at John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium) in Haslemere, Surrey.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s autograph manuscript of one of the 13 short stories that in 1905 were gathered together in book form as The Return of Sherlock Holmes was offered in New York recently.