Auctioneers

Christie’s seven sales dominated the New York Asian art series. With a couple of sales still to go across the weekend, the firm’s running total was close to $35m, more than twice the aggregate of its competitors.

Christie’s sale of an ancient marble idol has created an art world battleground between Turkey and the saleroom, testing ownership laws...

The group of regional auctioneers known as The Association of Accredited Auctioneers (AAA) has relaunched as an organisation to promote business and pool resources in the face of “a post-Brexit world and a rapidly changing market”.

Best of 193 lots of film posters which made up a specialist sale at Burstow Hewett (15% buyer’s premium) at Battle was this variation for the classic movie The Maltese Falcon.

In recent years Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) has enjoyed considerable success with cookery manuscripts and the most recent auction further enhanced the saleroom’s recipe for culinary success.

The field encompassed by ‘Design’ sales is being diligently tilled by many UK auctioneers aware of the potential of a market appealing to younger buyers wary of traditional antiques.

Enhancing a growing reputation at Edinburgh auction house Thomson Roddick (17.5% buyer’s premium) for optical instruments, a recent sale included 18 lots of binoculars and the like.

About a month ago, collector Robert Mulraine launched a website dedicated to the artist Thomas Baker of Leamington (1808-1869). A great enthusiast of the Victorian landscape painter, he has been working with the curatorial team of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to create an online ‘Memoranda of Pictures’ based on the artist’s five diaries in the museum’s collection.

Details on the back of a pastel drawing lead to detective work and royal portraitist connection...

Less than six months after holding its first auction in its Pall Mall home, Stanley Gibbons’ The Fine Art Auction Group (TEFAAG) has left the central London premises and is in the process of selling the lease.

Bid to £45,000 at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) was an extensively revised and corrected autograph draft of what was to become Charles Dickens’ tale of ‘Mrs Gamp with the Strolling Players’.

Two aspects of soldiering – a touch of glamour and life at the deadly sharp end – were illustrated in two lots at a Tennants (18.5% buyer’s premium) antiques and militaria sale at Leyburn.

Catalogued as early English, this slipware dish above had all the qualities of the combed decoration earthenware baking, or loaf, dishes produced in the late 18th to early 19th century and took the top price at Mitchells (20% buyers premium) of Cockermouth.

Found by a dog walker in a roadside skip, this remarkably intact Victorian majolica teapot found the ideal bidder at Brighton General Auctions (15% buyer’s premium).

While plenty of general auctions around the country feature a range of 19th century and early 20th century paintings, Bonhams is staging its next dedicated sale in this category on September 27.

Located on the Vistula river in northern Poland, the old city of Torun somehow escaped undamaged from the ravages of the Second World War and is now recognised as one of the country’s national treasures.

A Regency period guide to ballroom dancing, sold for a much higher than expected £800, was a rare and welcome entry in the book section of a September 6 sale held by Hartleys (18% buyer’s premium) of Ilkley.

A painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo will feature in the next auction at Alcalá Subastas on October 4-5.

Two rare early pieces of furniture by the famous architect and designer Finn Juhl are among the highlights in Bruun Rasmussen’s Design sale to be held in Copenhagen on September 27-28.