Auctions

One of the more unusual clocks on offer this summer was the late 19th century French ‘devil band’ mantel clock that attracted international bidding at Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium).

It’s fair to say the work of Victorian animal painter Sidney Cooper (1803-1902) is not flavour of the month.

Wide-ranging Lyell family archive brings high prices across the board in London.

One of the harder titles in the New Naturalist series to find today is RJ Berry’s Natural History of Orkney.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period August 30-September 5, 2018. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

The product of child labour – but conscious-clear purchases for bidders – provided two of the top lots at a specialist textiles and costume sale at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) of North Yorkshire.

In a worn but period calf binding, a 1697 first of John Evelyn’s Numismata. A Discourse of Medals… made £350 in the book section of a recent Cornish auction.

Known familiarly as the ‘Audley End Lydgate’, the mid-15th century vellum manuscript shown below is ‘The Fall of Princes’, a Middle English version by the poet John Lydgate of Laurent de Premierfait’s French translation of Boccaccio’s De Casibus virorum illustrium.

Chicago auction house Potter & Potter (20% buyer’s premium) is conjuring up quite a reputation for its magic memorabilia sales.

Plenty to interest European buyers was available at Thomaston Place Auction Galleries (17% buyer’s premium) in Maine on August 25-26.

“Isn’t it possible that the Irish could be just as brilliant in the visual arts as they have been in music and literature?”

A classic French René Lalique perfume bottle was on offer at Virginia auction house Jeffrey S Evans on August 24-25 from the collection of the late Joan M Wentz, Germansville, Pennsylvania, which had been amassed over 50 years.

UK dealers buying foreign silver, overseas bidders taking British work and generally solid interest for traditional pieces of mid-ranking silver brightened up the normally quieter late summer sales across the country.

Two lots offering heraldic manuscripts – one of them being of particular regional interest – produced the highest bids in a mixed sale of collectables and militaria held in Shrewsbury.

Three modestly valued works in regional sales, all sold below £700.

Our round-up of British and Irish book sales coming up from September 11-21, 2018.

An unpublished letter written by Nelson Mandela from his prison cell on Robben Island is to be offered at Bonhams’ South African sale in New Bond Street on September 14.

This bronze sculpture by Louis-Albert Lefeuvre (1845- 1924), Les Fondeurs du Moyen Age, was one of the highlights of a single-owner collection sold by Alderfer Auction in Hatfield, Pennsylvania.