Auctions

Like many businesses scarred with bomb damage in post-war Britain, Lyons teashops were in need of cheering up.

The morality laws of pre-liberal Ireland added to the allure and market value of this Goldfinger poster offered by Richard Winterton (17.5% buyer’s premium).

It took less than five minutes for a work by Max Beckmann (1884-1950) to become the most expensive painting ever sold at a German auction.

Putting a third major collection of highly specialist and highly priced material onto the market within little over three years might seem to be asking too much of a limited number of wealthy enthusiasts.

A sophisticated disc-playing music box brought one of the highest recent prices for mechanical music at Thimbleby & Shorland (12% buyer’s premium) in Reading.

The 195-lot collection of mask netsuke amassed by Swiss entrepreneur Peter Müller met with mixed success when offered by Matthew Barton (24% buyer’s premium).

Billed as “the world’s most valuable illustrated book”, the ex-Duke of Portland set of Audubon’s Birds of America offered by Christie’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on June 14 was sold for $8.3m (£6.24m), a price only once bettered at auction.

"He had taken a taxi from Heathrow to Easingwold. After fierce bidding on the phones and internet he bought it, put it in his suitcase and the taxi was still waiting outside the saleroom with the meter ticking to go back to Heathrow.”

Camels are the linking theme of the two lots illustrated here, so a verse by Ogden Nash copied below seems to fit the bill.

For many years now, German Enigma code machines have been making big, sums at auction, but in the Bonhams New York June 12 sale a slim codebook relating to their use also prompted a much, much higher than expected and six-figure bid.

A typically moody oil by the Scottish painter James Pryde (1866-1941) was among the star lots at Cuttlestones (17.5% buyer’s premium) in Penkridge, Staffordshire.

Germany’s most expensive painting sold at auction, an unusual early firearm and a fin de siècle snake charmer are among the highlights featured here from recent auctions in Munich, Berlin and Cologne.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from June 26-July 7, 2018.

Three modestly valued works in regional sales, including an oil on canvas of Bude in Cornwall by Charles Collins (1851-1921).

The earliest publication in any form of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar came with its inclusion as part of the 1623 First Folio, and in a recent US sale a bound set of the 22pp that it occupied in that great work prompted a six-figure bid.

Nearly 500 lots of Modern British and 20th century art went under the hammer at Woolley & Wallis (25/12% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury to notch up a total of £535,000 with three-quarters sold.