Auctioneers

Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull have been named among the runners up in the Bank of Scotland £25m Entrepreneur Challenge, a national competition designed to identify and support excellence in businesses.

SMALL in size but large in shock value, this portrait miniature stunned the Gorringes’ saleroom when it sold at £90,000 plus 17.5 per cent buyer’s premium on December 6.

Bonhams are being sued in a case that could have a significant impact on contracts between vendors and auction houses.

Among the highlights of Tennants’ Autumn Catalogue sale held in Leyburn on November 22-23 was this exceptional Victorian Egyptian revival table clock.

THE British Museum were credited with uncovering the fraud that led to the jailing of serial faker Shaun Greenhalgh two weeks ago, while auction houses and the trade were criticised for selling his work.

It was a headline writer’s dream: an 80-year-old William Crawford & Sons biscuit tin still with its original contents intact sold at auction for a massive £13,000 (plus 20 per cent buyer’s premium). Crumbs! Cookie tin brings a lot of dough (Reuters) was just one of a number of groaning puns.

Woolley & Wallis still hold the record for any item sold at auction in the UK outside London. Now it looks like their chairman, Paul Viney, could also hold the record for the top price raised for a single lot at a charity auction.

Upwards of 150 people crammed into the top floor of The Texas Embassy restaurant off Pall Mall in London last week for the fourth annual Antiques Trade Pub Quiz.

South West auctioneers Chilcotts are to open a second saleroom in Honiton.

Bonhams have announced the appointment of a new managing director of Scotland and confirmed that new premises have been found in Edinburgh.

Bonhams chairman Robert Brooks has issued a public statement taking a strong stand against the guarantee system following the November art sales in New York and London.

Gagosian’s bid gives Sotheby’s new heart

Anyone who picked up Sotheby’s latest Chinese catalogue for their November 7 sale in London could not have failed to notice the stunning blue and white Qianlong moonflask on the catalogue cover, the piece that topped the sale when it sold for £2.5m.

Aggressive estimates rather than a fallout from credit-market losses were responsible for the first ‘wobble’ in the international art market, say Sotheby’s.

BEARNE’S have been forced to withdraw a large number of lots relating to Lord Byron from their November 7 sale.

When the last of the 823 lots in the sale of the contents Ariane Dandois’ Gallery on the Faubourg St Honoré in Paris was hammered down by Sotheby’s on October 26, it provided a $32.2m (£16.9m) grand finale to a month of sales devoted to traditional areas of the decorative arts in New York.

PREVIOUSLY unpublished letters from the poet John Betjeman are to form part of the setting for a travelling display of early 20th century jewellery designer Helen Holmes at Bonhams.

The descendants of James Thursby Pelham, a renowned early 20th century collector who was advised by R. W. Symonds, are in the process of selling some fine English furniture.

Two different pistols with very different stories sold at provincial auctions in the UK in October.

Collectors of Clarice Cliff have voiced their opposition to increased auctioneers’ charges with some refusing to attend Christie’s latest sale of the popular Art Deco pottery.