Auctions

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.

More homely than the material being produced in Scandinavia and France, the adzed oak furniture first made by Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson in the 1920s-30s was, nevertheless, a distinctive genre.

Based in one of the great centres of English glass, Fieldings (20% buyer’s premium) of Stourbridge has been building its reputation for glass sales over the past 15 years and today “nobody sells more glass than we do”, says specialist Will Farmer.

After abandoning his early career as a contributor to Punch and the Illustrated London News, Myles Birket Foster (1825-99) went on to establish his reputation as a painter of technically skilled and highly polished watercolours, depicting landscapes and rustic subjects from Scotland to the Mediterranean.

It was during the First World War that the convenience of the wristwatch began to replace the pocketwatch but it really came into its own with the production of bespoke ‘tool’ watches for submariners and airmen later in the century.

When it comes to early or vintage photographs the interest is often centred around the social history of the material – the camera’s ability to document past events, be they special occasions or scenes of everyday life.

Early views of China are often best-sellers in the realm of topographical photography. An album of 83 albumen prints from the 1860s-70s proved to be a major attraction at Bonhams’ latest book sale held in Knightsbridge.

Some time in the early 1930s, the burghers of Norwich City Council appear to have been sufficiently cutting-edge as to purchase furniture by the designer destined to become one of the major names of 20th century design, Alvar Aalto (1898-1976).

Two first-edition versions of George Orwell’s 'The Road to Wigan Pier', the first part of which is an investigation into the working-class living conditions in Lancashire, Yorkshire and the industrial north, were published in 1937.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period April 4-10, 2019. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Watch collectors priced out of the market for blue-chip branded sports models are finding value for money elsewhere.