Auctioneers

West London‘s Chiswick Auctions is to open a new showroom in South Kensington manned by at least eight former Christie’s staff.

A pair of lions from the funerary monument of Charles V of France was the toast of Christie’s Exceptional sale in London on July 6.

A new auction house is to open in London hoping to find a gap in the market for cameras, scientific and medical instruments.

The latest Old Master sales in London put in a solid performance with the overall total from last week’s auction series running at £115m (including premium) with one day sale still to take place at the time of going to press.

Another work by CRW Nevinson (1889-1946) in the form of an aerial wartime print was offered in Gorringe’s (23% buyer’s premium) June 27 sale.

Andreas Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica is one of those rare epoch-making works, a publication that changes everything in its field and sets a standard for others to emulate.

At the Drouot auction centre in June around 3000 items of Asian art went under the hammer in a series of 20 auctions that were either dedicated sales or featured substantial Asian sections.

While many in the trade believe the future lies in specialisation, Gloucestershire auction house Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) is making significant inroads into the general market beyond its renown as expert in books, maps and other works on paper.

Following a near sell-out auction of Lowestoft in March at Keys of Aylsham, another tranche is poised to go under the saleroom’s hammer.

Bonhams Knightsbridge is keen to assert its place in London’s evolving auction scene, managing director Jon Baddeley tells ATG.

Originally entered for a general sale at Charterhouse Auctions (20% buyer’s premium), a distinctive little walnut table with brass leg attachments caught the eye of auctioneer Richard Bromell who diverted it to the fine sale in the Sherborne rooms on June 22.

“It is something, at the age of 31, to be among the most discussed, most successful, most promising, most admired and most hated British artists.” So wrote the critic Charles Lewis Hind about the war artist CRW Nevinson (1889-1946) in 1920.

A moment of good old-fashioned saleroom drama emerged at Christie’s antiquities sale on July 5 when an Etruscan bronze mirror, estimated at £10,000-15,000, sold at £390,000 (plus 25/20/12% buyer’s premium). The buyer was a European institution.

Entered by a leading UK college, two very similar pairs of mid-18th century mahogany lecterns, one illustrated above, became the focus of two major West Country dealers at Tayler & Fletcher’s (20% buyer’s premium) June 22 sale at Bourton-in-the-Water.

A June 16 sale at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne included theological works from the library of Edward Tottenham (1810-53), a cleric whose parishes were in Bath and Wells.

Highly collectable in itself, this 1920s car showroom lightbox advertising sign, right, had extra appeal to one bidder at automobilia specialists Richard Edmonds’ (20% buyer’s premium) sale at Chippenham on June 16.

A further selection of children’s annuals from the Brenda Butler archive, characterised as usual by superb condition, provided some of the highlights of a May 2 sale at Comic Book Auctions (16% buyer’s premium).