Auctions

Well-provenanced Chinese works of art posted strong sums in what was a workmanlike, rather than spectacular, Asian art season for the leading regional auctioneers.

One of the most comprehensive and best-preserved football memorabilia collections auctioneer Graham Budd (17.5% buyer’s premium) has ever handled netted a hammer total of £107,000 for a remarkable 47 lots including medals and caps on November 14-15.

Among the items on offer in the December 16 auction of traditional fine art, furniture, decorative items and jewellery to be held by Stair Galleries in Hudson, New York, will be this Aesthetic Movement ebonised and parcel-gilt pedestal standing.

"If it hadn't been for the Blue Boxes, there would have been no Apple. I'm 100% sure of that." So said Steve Jobs of the electronic devices that simulate operators by generating the tones used by a telephone operator’s dialling console, and were typically used from the 1950s by so-called ‘phone phreakers’ to avail themselves of free calls.

A Sioux Indian beaded knife sheath from the Battle of Little Bighorn could be the highlight of Skinner’s sale of American Indian and Ethnographic art to be held on December 2 in Boston.

Theodor Geisel, writer, cartoonist and artist, is better known as Dr Seuss, the author of a host of children’s books. These are now famous the world over for the magical way in which they used a repetitive vocabulary and striking images to aid reading and render it an enjoyable experience.

In this 1917 Revolution centenary year, Soviet art assumes extra prominence at this season’s Russian series.

A letter that Edward Lear wrote in 1881 to a friend to whom he intended to dispatch two drawings of Athens was among the more successful lots that Bloomsbury Auctions (24/18/12% buyer’s premium) sold on October 19.

After a two-year wait, lots from the defunct manuscript investment scheme Aristophil will be resold at the Drouot in Paris next month.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi was hammered down at $400m in Christie’s post-war and contemporary art evening sale in New York on November 15.

It’s easy to feel disconnected from the hoopla surrounding Christie’s sale last week of a Leonardo da Vinci for an astronomical $400m.

Twelve items of jewellery belonging to Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938) – the woman who inspired the DH Lawrence character Lady Chatterley – contributed more than £15,000 to the sale conducted by Woolley & Wallis on October 26.

Musical manuscripts, letters and photographs of composers offered at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on October 26 comprised the first part only of what was described as “a distinguished private collection” of books that is to be dispersed next year.

Highlighting the next photographs auction at Doyle, New York, on December 14 is an Ansel Adams Museum Set comprising 75 gelatin silver prints of the most famous images, each with a pencil signature, from the legendary photographer.