Auctions

Three leading specialists in orders, decorations and medals are leaving Spink to join rival London firm Dix Noonan Webb.

The Sotheby’s Hong Kong Spring series of sales closed today chalking up a total of HK$502.8m/USD$64.5m/GB£242.3m.

Made under the watchful eye of the third Qing emperor, a porcelain vase valued at just £12-15 in the 1950s is expected to bring over £20,000 when it is sold at auction on April 27-28.

The prosecution in the trial of the Cols Rouges – the erstwhile portering staff at Hôtel Drouot, the communal saleroom facility used by most Paris auctioneers – have called for prison sentences of up to five years and fines of €250,000 for those found guilty of theft and criminal conspiracy.

The man himself may have disappeared in 1974 but a series of cheques showing Lord Lucan’s spiralling gambling debts have now emerged and will be offered at auction later this month.

An important collection of early chess pieces will be offered as part of Sotheby’s Islamic sale in London on April 20.

John Wood the Elder’s (1704-54) set of drawing instruments were offered at Clevedon Auction Rooms earlier this month and were bought by the Bath Preservation Trust for £21,000.

London-based Criterion Auctioneers are to launch quarterly auctions in Wiltshire, targeting high-value consignments from around the UK.

An Eric Ravilious (1903-42) watercolour has emerged at Sworders of Essex and will be among the star lots at their first dedicated Modern British Art sale next month.

Catalogued as white metal, with no hallmarks, a snuff box included in the silver section at Adam Partridge’s recent sale at Macclesfield caused a stir. The mark it did have was that of the great Huguenot maker, David Willaume.

A previously unrecorded copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio has emerged at Christie’s. Estimated at £800,000-1.2m, it will lead a specially-staged auction in May comprising just four lots – a copy of each of the first four Shakespeare folios.

Among the lots drawing competition at the latest picture sale held by Mallams of Oxford was a hilltop view of the Sussex landscape by Hannah Gluckstein (1895-1978).

Auction houses selling wine, whisky and other alcoholic drinks to other businesses face criminal convictions and fines up to £10,000 if they fail to register for a new HMRC scheme that aims to police the sale of alcohol to retailers and capture an estimated £1.2bn in unpaid tax.

An important work by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) will be among the leading lots on offer at this summer’s auction series in London. Lot and his Daughters from c.1613-14 will be the centrepiece of Christie’s newly launched ‘curated’ week of sales branded Classic Week in July.

An original example of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic sold for €185,000 at Whyte’s of Dublin yesterday. Estimated at €150,000-250,000, the document published by the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army was one of only 40-50 known copies left in existence and it drew competition from two phone bidders, one from Ireland and the other from the US who ended up as the successful buyer.

A 16th century Tibetan gilt-bronze figure of the Buddhist deity Green Tara sold to an international bidder for £15,500 at Bellmans in Wisborough Green – a coup for the vendor who had paid just £25 for it at a car boot fair.

The highlight of Bainbridges latest sale in West Ruislip was a 1560 Geneva Bible which sold for £8500.

Dix Noonan Webb have achieved the second highest price for a George Cross just eight months after selling the GC awarded to the secret agent Violette Szabo for a record £260,000.

The so-called Lucerne pattern, decorated in primary colours with a stylised Mediterranean chateau in a landscape, ranks among the scarcest and most desirable of all designs from Clarice Cliff’s ‘Appliqué’ range.

Cased fish, once the only acceptable face of the taxidermy market, have cooled since the 1990s when prices in excess of £3000 were commonplace.