News topics

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from June 3-15, 2019.

Ceramics are a major focus of this report on sales from Germany. The selection of highlights and unusual pieces ranges from early 19th century products of the Vienna factory via Art Nouveau creations and 1920s Soviet-era porcelain to works by famed 20th century Studio potters.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period May 23-29, 2019. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Coming fresh to market from a corn merchant’s shop, seven early/mid- 20th century enamel signs extolling Spratt’s pet food for dogs, cats and canaries attracted UK collectors to Bishop & Miller’s (20% buyer’s premium) Stowmarket sale on May 17.

The hope at every house clearance came true for Reading auctioneer Chris Boreham when he unearthed this set of four Georgian silver rococo candlesticks at a local home.

An acrylic on paper of Timanfaya, the only active volcano on the Canary Island of Lanzarote, by British artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004), is one of the highlights of the exhibition A Distant Isle.

Headline stratospheric results should not put collectors off, as a London auction underlines.

Pamphlet in later royal binding offers thanksgiving for James I’s survival of Gunpowder Plot.

A pair of large c.1760 Chelsea ovoid vases made after a drawing by English architect and furniture designer William Kent (1685-1748), is on offer at Albert Amor this month.

Three potential highlights from German auctions at Van Ham in Cologne, Quittenbaum in Munich and Wendl in Rudolstadt.

Part of the flying section of the most recent of the Military, Aviation & Transport History sales that are a regular feature of the calendar at Dominic Winter offered a collection of ephemera related to the earlier years of European civil aviation.

Five oil paintings by the German artist Gabriele Münter, long-time companion and partner of Wassily Kandinsky, were very much at the centre of the action on May 8 in Stuttgart when Nagel (33% buyer’s premium) sold Modern and Contemporary art.