Auctions

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period October 4-11, 2018. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Investigation into wine storage is unusual success in computing library auction.

Catching the eye in a German auction was a fine example of the most beautiful of all piscatorial plate books.

Earlier this year, the Paris auction house Artcurial sold an exceptional collection of Impressionist and Cubist works by the influential Czech avant-garde artist Otakar Kubin (1883-1969).

It may seem hard to credit nowadays, but photographs of fairies at the bottom of the Cottingley (Yorkshire) garden of two young girls, produced in 1917 as a practical joke, were taken to be genuine by many people – most famously, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Taxidermy, having emerged in a few years from a dusty, rather unseemly subject to a rostrum hot topic, continues to flourish across the country.

A private collection of more than 30 pieces of Pilkington’s Lancastrian lustre excelled when offered at Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium) in Edinburgh on October 10.

“If I was to select just one lot we have sold this year,” says John Albrecht, managing director at Leonard Joel, “it would be the haunting, period photo of Australia’s infamous bushranger, Ned Kelly, taken in 1874 after a boxing match.”

This medal documents a little-known moment in the history of the English Civil War. In 1648, following a revolt in the Parliamentary fleet, a number of ships went to Helvoetsluys in the western Netherlands and were organised as a Royalist squadron by Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619-82).

This watercolour bearing the signature of Norwich School artist John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) attracted a flurry of bids when it went under the hammer in Nottingham.