Auctions

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period June 7-13, 2018. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Two notable single-owner collections, augmented by items from the round of Oriental art sales, made spring a bumper crop in the specialist world of fans.

“The open road, the dusty highway, the heath, the common, the hedgerows, the rolling downs!”

MADAM – Like David Carter (ATG No 2345) I can remember the time when we auctioneers could make a living with only seller’s commission of 10%.

Catalogued as Anglo-Indian but probably Indo-Portuguese, this ivory, tortoiseshell and white metal casket, below, was a box of delight for the vendor.

A plaster plaque of a mother and child drew multiple bids when it was offered at Hutchinson Scott (20% buyer’s premium) in Skipton, North Yorkshire.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from June 19-29, 2018.

“It was totally unexpected – as the best finds always are,” Derbyshire auctioneer Charles Hanson told ATG. “A client came along to our office in East Molesey carrying a cardboard box. Inside, wrapped in an old tea towel, was not one, but two, Fabergé flowers.”

Bound together, first editions of both parts of the 1679-83 edition of Maria Sybilla Merian’s study of caterpillars and their transformation into butterflies, Der Raupen…, sold to a Danish bidder for €42,000 (£32,060) in a sale held by Ketterer Kunst (23% buyer’s premium) of Hamburg.

An auction record for FCB Cadell (1883-1937) was the highlight of Sotheby’s 31-lot sale of works from the Harrison collection of Scottish Colourists, writes Alex Capon.

Advertising and souvenir fans from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries received a mixed reception at the April 10 Special Auction Services sale at Newbury devoted to works collected by the late Martin Willcocks.

A quartet of oils by the contemporary British painter Sherree Valentine-Daines (b.1959) produced multi-estimate prices when they went under the hammer in Sussex.

Consisting of just two autograph leaves, but catalogued as “one of the most important fragments still in private hands”, a manuscript dating from the last years of Mozart’s short life topped a recent London music sale.

The post-war industrial modernist designs of Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand remain firm sellers. Pieces from their best-documented commissions, like the furnishings created in the 1950s for the student residences of the Cité Universitaire in Paris, are particularly strong.

In the immediate post-war era the work of the French designer-decorator Jean Royère (1902-81) took a turn to embrace a more organic or ‘biomorphic’ style.

Early manuscript compilations for medical and culinary recipes feature quite regularly and successfully at auction, but an example in a recent London sale was one with a morbid statistical addition that achieved a treble-estimate £15,000.

The Federalist…, a collection of essays first published in New York newspapers in the years immediately following independence, is today recognised as a seminal work on American political theory and a cornerstone of constitutional governance.

Most high-flying ‘design’ is made in multiples. These can be limited editions in short runs but, as some of the most iconic pieces have been produced in their millions, their commercial value is typically vested in early examples or prototypes.

Stroud Auction Rooms has moved into a grade-II listed property in the Gloucestershire market town while securing a second site for future expansion.

In the bottle collecting field, they are calling it ‘one of the best ever finds’.