Auctions

A rare Roman gold aureus, found by a metal detectorist in a field in Kent earlier this year, was hammered down at Dix Noonan Webb last week for a house record £460,000.

Sotheby’s believes it has found a missing piece from the Lewis chessmen hoard – the cache of 12th or 13th century walrus ivory carvings that chiefly resides in the British Museum.

Berlin auction house Grisebach posted an auction record for the Swiss artist Karl Stauffer-Bern (1857-91) on May 29 when it sold a self-portrait which had been recently restituted to the family of its original Jewish owners.

A maquette for the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in London’s Tavistock Square – valued at £20,000 on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow – was the top lot in a sale of works from the Polish-born artist Fredda Brilliant (1903-99).

An impressive 8in (20cm) high ice pail, cover and liner made what is thought to be a record auction result for Swansea porcelain when it sold for £38,000 hammer at Bonhams in Knightsbridge on June 5.

The latest week of Russian art auctions in London generated £35.8m including premium, the highest total for a June series in this category since 2014.

Desmond Morris on his many lives as a zoologist, painter, author and collector

Golden Age collaboration between two London clockmakers leads a look at the market including hammer highlights, auction previews and dealer news.

A fan showcasing the opulence of 19th century European aristocracy will be auctioned at North Yorkshire saleroom Tennants on June 27.

A mixed-discipline summer estates sale to be held by Neal Auction Company in New Orleans on June 22-23 will include this pair of 70oz, silver-gilt Edwardian figural tazzae by Elkington & Co marked for Birmingham 1907 with removable glass bowls.

A remarkable cache of paintings depicting bomb-scarred London during the Blitz by a Jewish artist who devoted herself to a life of altruistic endeavour sold at an auction in Sussex.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from June 11-21, 2019.

Born in Mount Kisco, New York, Peter Chinni (1928-2019) studied painting and portraiture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome.

This c.1900 French automaton is included in the next sale held by Chicago saleroom Potter & Potter specialist auction house of magic props and memorabilia.

By the 1980s, Thomas Mercer of St Albans had made almost a third of all chronometers in history – including that used by Ernest Shackleton to navigate his men to Elephant Island and eventual rescue during the Trans-Arctic Expedition of 1914.

Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) was an American artist whose oeuvre – paintings, murals and lithographs – was at the forefront of the Regionalist movement.