Europe

For 300 years, from the 1520s to the 1820s, the great Gothic cathedral in Cologne remained unfinished – the building overshadowed by a large crane, which for centuries dominated the panorama on the banks of the Rhine.

In April this year, the founder of the auction house Nusser in Munich, Ursula Nusser, died aged just 66.

Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) recent sale in Paris of books and manuscripts was led at €125,000 (£113,635) by a Nobel Prize for Literature medal awarded in 1947, just four years before his death, to the essayist, critic, novelist and dramatist André Gide.

Military uniforms reached their ornamental peak in the 19th century Western Europe – with the leaders of the day sharing in their ostentation

Our regular listing of books and works on paper auctions the UK and Ireland.

Friedrich Goldscheider (1845-97) is famous for founding the Goldscheider ceramics factory which was set up in Vienna in 1885.

Outside Paris auctions have also started up as lockdown eases.

Sotheby’s Paris (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) reported a cumulative total of €5.4m for the five online sales it held over two weeks in mid May through to early June. The initiative attracted new buyers, said the auction house, with 35% in the jewellery sale and 27% in the Contemporary art auction.

Around 20 years ago the owner of a mediaeval manor house in northern Europe made an exciting discovery when clearing out the moats of the fortified house.

A newly discovered bronze by a French Renaissance sculptor was acquired by the Louvre museum for €1.15m (£1.05m) at an auction in Paris on June 9.

This painting of Madame de Saint-Maurice is one of five works by Edouard Vuillard spanning the years 1900-18 from the Georges and Jacqueline Herbin collection on offer at Artcurial in Paris.

This 1890s Japoniste-style photograph frame in brown patinated bronze applied with gilt branches of stylised myosotis is by the Paris firm of Maison Millet.

Auction rooms in France are gradually opening up again, albeit within the limitations of the new health and safety regulations set as a result of the coronavirus and aided by the extra input from absentee bidding on phones and online.

Dual time zones watches first came into fashion in France, where they were used to show both ‘time’ in the traditional manner and also Revolutionary time, a short-lived idea based on the decimal system.

Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) has held its first live sales in Paris since lockdown.

Our regular listing of books and works on paper auctions the UK and Ireland.