Auctions

A Morris & Co adjustable armchair brought strong competition at a recent auction in Cumbria. In largely original condition despite some obvious signs of wear and tear, it was taken to 10 times its estimate at PFK Auctioneers before it was knocked down at £7600.

A large cache of letters from Victorian artists including founder member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) have been consigned to Shropshire auctioneers Trevanion & Dean.

A cabinet made by Scottish designer and architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) for a Victorian tea room businesswoman has sold for £11,000 at Willingham Auctions in Cambridge.

‘We are selling… we are sellll-iiing…’ as Rod Stewart nearly sang. We all need a good clear-out now and again, even rock stars. Stewart has asked a local auction firm to help out with his.

A couple emigrating to the US from Russia in the early 20th century was not exactly headline news, but sadly for university graduates Miriam and Sinai Kantor they became part of one of the biggest stories of the day.

Railway-related items remain one of the staples of the collectables market, with rarity and links to locomotive history among the key factors determining demand. Here ATG selects a small group of items from the healthy supply of lots on offer at two auctions taking place this week.

In our recent ATG jewellery feature we wrote about how the death of silver designer Stuart Devlin earlier this year and a book he published just beforehand could lead to a reappraisal of his work. When it comes to auctions, a very good market test is coming up soon.

A large 19th century panorama of London, completed towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars, has entered the Museum of London’s permanent collection after the institution acquired it at a recent Sotheby’s auction.

The pair to the famous ‘Bainbridge vase’ – knocked down at £43m in 2010 but later sold for half of that sum – is to come to market. Sotheby’s will sell the near identical vase, that has a century-long provenance, in Hong Kong in the autumn.

Frank Frazetta’s painting Escape on Venus does not feature any of the pirates, zombies or ugly communists that appear in the story it accompanies. Still, the picture easily attracted enough attention to make it the top lot at a recent Heritage Auctions sale.