Auctions

It was a case of best feet forward at Stroud Auctions (18% buyer’s premium) when a pair of Georgian ladies’ embroidered shoes with cut steel buckles and leather soles was offered.

The May 11-12 Geneva sale conducted by Phillips in association with watch consultancy Bacs & Russo includes one of the most complicated wristwatches of the pre-war era: the Vacheron Constantin minute repeater with retrograde calendar from 1940.

Running to 50 volumes in all, the official report on 'The Scientific Results of the Voyage of HMS Challenger during the years 1873-76 in Atlantic, Pacific and Antarctic seas' took some 23 years to complete.

In an age of cumbersome large photographical apparatus, the race was on in the mid-19th century to produce practical small, easily portable cameras.

A look at the latest photograph auction highlights, potential sale stars to come, fairs coming up and a camera and equipment spotlight.

In terms of name recognition in the UK, Alvar Aalto is probably outranked by the American couple Charles Eames (1907-78) and his wife Ray (1912-88). Of their output the lounge chair (670) and ottoman (671) designed in 1956 is the most iconic.

Now a regular fixture for a number of auction houses, specialist Modern Design sales have moved a long way since the days when the title could mean mountains of Moorcroft and Clarice Cliff and not a lot more.

Devoted wholly to modern firsts, a recent online sale presented the first selection of a single-owner collection – the second portion of which will be sold later in the year.

An incomplete set of that remarkable ornithological work, William Lewin’s 'Birds of Great Britain', was the most expensive lot in a recent Yorkshire sale.

Special Auction Services regularly holds sales of photographic equipment cameras and photographs in its Newbury rooms.

The ‘Big Red’ Daytona reference 6265 is one of the most desirable Rolex chronographs from the 1980s.

'Electricité', pictured below, is one of a limited edition portfolio of 10 photogravures after Man Ray’s Rayographs from a 1931 commercial commission from the artist by the Compagnie Parisienne de Distribution d’Electricité.

With a documented provenance and inscribed by the maker Sébastien Garnier, Paris, 1747, a two-manual harpsichord was the top performer at the latest musical instruments sale held by Corsham, Bath, specialist Gardiner Houlgate (20% buyer’s premium).

Flemish Old Masters and Modern works combined to boost takings at two spring sales held north and south in England.

The boom in all things Chinese does occasionally make one marvel as to how and why some material finished up in the West.

The early weeks of March proved a particularly busy time for one saleroom in the US. As well as sales featuring the medical and scientific collections of W Bruce Fye, reported in ATG No 2386, Bonhams New York (27.5/25/20/13.9%) also sold the seventh instalment of Eric Caren’s How History Unfolds on Paper collection online, and in itsMadison Avenue rooms offered Extraordinary Books & Manuscripts.

Universal Genève helped change the horological landscape in 1934 with the introduction of an affordable two-button Compur chronograph – a line that continued into the 1940s.

Lyon & Turnbull’s (25% buyer’s premium) inaugural Modern Made auction at the Mall Galleries in London received plenty of encouraging noises from the dealing and collecting community as it posted a total of £1m (including premium).

A significant collection of pictures by the Victorian watercolourist Albert Goodwin (1845-1932) was a near sell-out at auction in Suffolk and generated just under £120,000.

Philippe Fortuné Durand is regarded as the first professional photographer in France.