Auctions

The Flemish designer Henry van de Velde excelled in many fields, working as a painter and architect, before he devoted himself to creating a multitude of designs, from cutlery to furniture, from wallpaper to porcelain.

Collectors with a keen eye for rarities saw to it that unusual pieces of Märklin offered by Antico Mondo (21.5% buyer’s premium) in Bornheim went for multiples of their estimates.

Top-seller when a collection of antiques from the estate of a descendant of one of Britain’s longest-serving chancellors of the exchequer went to auction in the Cotswolds was an oil painting “in the manner of 17th century royal portraitist Peter Lely”.

Kali shaped from local hardwoods, typically ironwood, were traditionally made by canoe-builders in the South Sea islands.

Two of London’s salerooms sold Georgian pocket globes on March 12. Both hammered well above what proved modest estimates.

The legend of author Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) is forever linked with sport fishing.

Two years after a Wiltshire auction house set a record for Titanic memorabilia with “the watch recovered from the body of John Jacob Astor”, another timekeeper making precisely the same claim is coming to market.

Alice Liddell was just a 10-year-old living in Oxford in the 1860s when Charles Dodgson – better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll – spun a fantastical tale to her and her two sisters Edith and Lorina on a summer afternoon by the Thames.

The Mickey and Minnie Mouse motorcycle made by Tippco, c.1932, is the most desirable of all the German tinplate clockwork toys from the immediate pre-war period.

I was so glad to see the front page photo in ATG No 2738 [‘Bidders Pipe Up For Treen’].

Lake District cabinetmaker and woodcarver Ernest John Oldcorn trained at Gillows of Lancaster but he found his niche after joining the Arthur W Simpson workshop.

Single-owner collection reflects both the port’s position linking trade routes and the artisans it attracted

The South African auction scene is heavily dependent on the work of the handful of painters who played a key role in shaping the nation’s art in the first half of the 20th century.

Magic books library reflects obsession of collector who prized exceptionally clean examples

An original Georg Dionysius Ehret illustration of a magnolia blossom hammered for $330,000 (£242,000) at Arader Galleries (20% buyer’s premium) on February 7 in New York.

The March 3-4 sale at Chorley’s (25% buyer’s premium) in Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire, was topped by a good example of Qing imperial needlework: a yellow ground silk and metal thread cushion cover.