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A US judge has ordered Christie’s to identify the winning bidder of the $12.5m (£9.7m) Guennol Stargazer, an ancient Anatolian idol auctioned in New York in April.

As weapons of war, swords have an impressively long history, as demonstrated by recent auctions around the world. From two £11,000 Viking swords at Bonhams in London to General Patton’s 1945 presentation sabre at Hermann Historica (€54,000/£47,370), there were centuries of warfaring history on view, including blades from Japan, Korea and Greece.

Two American presentation swords, marking high points in two very different military careers, made their mark in recent sales.

Cased pairs of pistols remain a particular favourite with collectors, being relatively compact and often in excellent condition after centuries cocooned in their brass-bound mahogany boxes.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period July 13-19, 2017. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

The pick of a good selection of military muskets and rifles in Anthony Cribb’s (20% buyer’s premium) sale in Abingdon on June 27 was a relatively rare example of the Baker rifle issued to British rifle regiments from the beginning of the 19th century until the 1830s.

Thomas Del Mar (24% buyer’s premium) sold the first instalment of de-accessioned arms and armour from the John Woodman Higgins Museum in Massachusetts back in 2013 and a second in 2014.

The collection of Clarice Cliff formed by André Aerne, a voice professor at Butler University in the US who died last year, will be offered in an online sale at Christie’s this month.

After a 23-year career at Christie’s, where he was a director and international specialist in Asian art, Jeremy Morgan has joined Woolley & Wallis.

The art market is “neither frothy nor depressed”, according to Sotheby’s chief executive Tad Smith.

Thieves in Chipping Campden have struck at the core of the Court Barn Museum’s collection of Arts & Crafts silver and jewellery.

Leading a 75-lot Brontë collection sold by Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 10* was a set of two of the novels written by the sisters in the hugely productive years of 1846-47.

The unexpected highlight of a recent sale at Beurret & Bailly (20% buyer’s premium) in Basel was a work by the Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931) which had been considered lost for over a century.

Tim Goodman, former chairman of Sotheby’s Australia, is to relaunch his online auction house Fine Art Bourse (FAB) this month.

For many years auctioneers have been itching to move the finest arms and armour from the province of the specialist collector and establish them with a wider audience as works of art in their own right.

More 19th century art was offered in London when over 120 lots of European and Orientalist pictures went under the hammer at Christie’s.

The summer season brought a raft of modern art sales to continental Europe and the various salerooms around Germany were no exception.

Handsomely bound, a set of Gould’s Birds of Britain offered as part of the small but select Dorros ornithological library at Christie’s New York sale of June 15 failed against a $60,000-80,000 estimate, but in a Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) sale of the previous day a very differently presented set brought a mid-estimate £36,000.

Sporting guns are a little different from other areas of the arms and armour market in that many that are well over 100 years old are still in use today.