Auctions

Solid selling punctuated by a number of estimate-eclipsing bids made the July 17-18 sale a very welcome return to business for Tennants (20% buyer’s premium).

In Tibetan Buddhism the elephant-headed deity Vignataka is treated with considerable ambivalence.

Leading works held back until mixed-category July auctions in a drawn-out sales season.

Sold at £140,000 in the first of two early manuscript sales held by Bloomsbury Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 8 was a lot featured in the front page story in ATG No 2447.

Featured in Previews, ATG No 2449, was an amusing illustration of the Vacuum Tube, a proposed new means of mass transport from the pages of the Glasgow Looking Glass, a publication that has come to be widely regarded as the world’s first comic.

Estimated at £100-200 but sold for £2800 at Thomas Watson (25% buyer’s premium) in Darlington on August was a set of four Worcester parian menu holders.

Around the year 1904, during the Second Period of Belleek production in Fermanagh, Ulster, designer William Harris designed the Five O’Clock pattern.

Firsts of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice have made as much as £115,000* at auction.

This Meissen porcelain teapot from c.1722 will feature in the sale series to be held by Hargesheimer of Dusseldorf from September 10-12.

A group of works of art from a country home once owned by members of the Rothschild family boosted the latest Woolley & Wallis auction.

The Scottish government has updated its guidance on face coverings.

Matthias Buchinger (1674-1740), the so-called ‘Little Man of Nuremberg’, was just 2ft 5in (74cm) tall. Born in Ansbach without legs and having truncated arms without fingers, he nonetheless excelled at many occupations associated with physical dexterity.

Some aspects of the traditional antiques market continue to perform with zest – and ‘folk art’ is among them.

Two traditional drinking vessels brought surprising toasts to European craftsmen at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (23% buyer’s premium) in Exeter.

Japonisme, the craze for Japanese art first described by the French critic and collector Philippe Burty in 1872, became a key part of Tiffany & Co’s jewellery oeuvre from c.1877.

Circumstances are quickly changing the way items are bought and sold at auction – but the first principles of quality, keen pricing and provenance still apply.