Auctions

A £100 Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund sword, one of 23 awarded to captains who fought at Trafalgar, sold for $235,000 (£173,000), plus 15% buyer’s premium, to one of six phone bidders competing at James D Julia in Fairfield, Maine, on April 11.

A rare ebonised framed armchair after the original design by Edward William Godwin (1833-86) sold for £44,000 (plus 18% premium) at Moore Allen & Innocent in Cirencester on April 21.

A Spanish oil billed as an early work by Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) sold for €8m (£7m) at the Madrid auctioneers Abalarte on April 25.

Several single-owner collections boosted the total of Tennants’ (20% buyer’s premium) Spring Fine Art Sale in Leyburn, North Yorkshire, on March 25.

Networking is far more than a good chinwag. As Baldwin’s of St James’s medal specialist Mark Smith explains, it can also be good business.

In what has been a buoyant first quarter for clocks of quality, the 109 examples at Chiswick Auctions’ (22% buyer’s premium) March 21 sale of horology and European works of art made a significant contribution to the £225,000 taken by the 275 lots on offer.

What Aylsham auction house Keys (20% buyer’s premium) considered one of the largest private collections of Lowestoft ever to come to market was a near sell-out on March 21.

Held several times a year, the all-Cymru affair has been a regular fixture of Rogers Jones’ calendar for 16 years, offering primarily Welsh art and pottery.

Literary anniversaries are a good story to tell to potential sellers but do they bring greater interest and greater prices?

A fine collection of Meiji and 19th century Chinese ivory works of art sold at Hansons (17.5% buyer’s premium) offered a window onto a turbulent market.

It wasn’t so much a Road to Damascus moment for Edward Crichton but more the road back to Bury St Edmunds, a car journey that provided the Lacy Scott & Knight auctioneer with much-needed think time.

Among a handful of pieces of Gallé French art glass in a sale of decorative arts and design to be held by Tessier Sarrou & Associés at Drouot on May 4 is this example of the designer’s skills in the medium.

A selection of stand-out results achieved at auctions in the UK and abroad.

Silver was among the success stories of the wide-ranging March 30-April 1 sale at Hansons, in particular a 1705 Britannia standard chocolate pot.

One of the more intriguing clocks to come in the market this spring was this early 18th century bracket clock signed to the backplate Cha [rles] Goode, London offered at Duke’s (22% buyer’s premium) on April 12.

A painting by British landscape artist Harry Epworth Allen (1894-1958) drew a flurry of bids at Gardiner Houlgate (20% buyer’s premium) in Corsham near Bath on March 29-31.