News topics

Widely exported during the Meiji period to a Western market newly awake to the skills of Japanese craftsmen, okimono now often appear at provincial salerooms.

A likely candidate as highlight of the year for Exeter auction house Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium) will be the £305,000 Hans Coper vase (ATG last week, No 2332).

London saleroom Chiswick Auctions has secured four significant pieces of European and British sculpture not seen on the market for at least a generation.

A number of books on plastic surgery featured in a recent Californian sale including an 1833, first English edition of Johann F Dieffenbach’s Surgical Observations on the Restoration of the Nose.

On a lesser scale than the exceptional £35,000 George II chairs at Holloway’s sale, but standing out from the general run of brown furniture, were other encouraging results across the country in February.

A small soapstone figure of a grinning, reclining Buddha stole the show at Thomas Watson (24% buyer’s premium) of Darlington when it smashed its estimate of £80-120 to sell for £16,500.

Flash from the past at the Diss rooms of TW Gaze (18% buyer’s premium).

Dwarfed as they were by the £440,000 oil of St John the Evangelist (see ATG last week, No 2332), a number of other lots helped to make Holloway’s (20% buyer’s premium) first major sale of the year in Banbury on February 27 an event to remember.

This 23in x 2ft 7in (59 x 80cm) oil on canvas is attributed to Blanche Hoschedé-Monet (1865-1947), the step-daughter and daughter-in-law of Claude Monet.

New York gallery show coincides with and adds to the Asian art week of events...

Sotheby’s has something special to offer for the Paris drawings fest – a single-owner collection formed by a dedicated couple that, say the auctioneers, is the fruit of a life dedicated to a passion for painting and drawings.

Commander John Morton Lee OBE RN (retd.), who had a long career in the Royal Navy before turning his passion for watercolours into a dealer business, died peacefully on February 26 after a brief illness, aged 88.

There tends to be two key narratives about the antiques business of interest to the mainstream media.

A painting by the obscure Welsh artist James Dickson Innes (1887-1914) generated keen bidding at Essex saleroom Stacey’s (24% buyer’s premium) on February 26.

One highlight of a February 20 sale held in Italy was the handsome, armorially bound 1694 first edition of the Swiss born architect Carlo Fontana’s Templum Vaticanum.

‘Rock Star’ of physics and Nobel Prize winner, Richard Feynman, habitually refused to sign copies of his books, telling his editor: “I’m not going to go on TV and I’m not going to sign any books!”

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period March 1-7, 2018. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

A picture by Bloomsbury Group painter Roger Fry (1886-1934) drew strong bidding at Holloway’s in Banbury.

There is, of course, no shortage of works on paper to be found on sale at the Drouot auction centre either in the form of dedicated auctions or as sections within mixed-discipline sales.

The run of recent six-figure auction sums in the English regions now includes Cheffins posting a house record in Cambridge.