Auctions

The online-only sale of a modern British gallantry award estimated at a hefty £100,000-120,000 was always going to be an interesting test of the market.

Look back through the provenance of any major Impressionist work and the chances are it will have passed through the hands of Paul Durand-Ruel.

Halls’ director of fine art Jeremy Lamond has been leading a social media campaign to promote the virtues of antique furniture.

Sotheby’s have taken a 25% stake in RM, the classic and luxury car auctioneer, renaming the company RM Sotheby’s.

COMMENT: Former Olympia antiques fair director Victoria Borwick wants to be MP for Kensington & Chelsea. Let’s back her in our own interests, says ATG Editor Ivan Macquisten

This finely modelled ancient Egyptian bronze cat head with original large gold hoop earrings was the uncontested star of David Lay’s latest auction in Penzance, Cornwall.

They called him Groovy Bob, “one of the most influential people of the London sixties scene” according to Paul McCartney and immortalised, handcuffed to Mick Jagger inside a police van, by Pop artist Richard Hamilton in the screenprint, Swingeing London 67.

If you get your skates on and head to the Kent coast you will find things are on the move for antiques collectors.

This Tiffany Studios c.1905 table lamp proved the highlight of Denhams’ recent fine art sale in Horsham, Sussex. It was an unusual visitor to the UK regional saleroom.

Nostalgia is an important part of toy collecting, one that encourages otherwise fiscally astute middle-aged men to part with large sums of money for unblemished versions of the toys they had – or wished they had – as children.

Christie’s evening sale post-war & Contemporary art in London posted a decent performance with some of the biggest names in the market headlining the auction.

The Black Beauty, the prototype for all Gibson Les Paul guitars, will appear at Guernsey Auctions’ February 19 sale in New York.

A series of works by Joan Miró gave a major boost to Christie’s latest evening auction of Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist art.

Five works by Claude Monet helped Sotheby’s set a new high for a London auction of Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist art last night.

The Antique Collectors’ Club’s Annual Furniture Index (AFI) registered its seventh successive fall in 2014. However, only two categories depreciated substantially.

Exceptional pieces of antique furniture play by quite different rules to the more standard items when it comes to price performance.

The toy ripped open from plastic and cardboard may bring joy to a child – but it is the simple packaging that makes the big money when that child becomes a collector with an eye on pounds, not play value.

Strong sales of Modern and Contemporary art plus the Félix Marcilhac decorative arts collection helped propel Sotheby’s to the highest auction total in France in 2014, with sales figures of €213m.

A series of three events aimed at collectors and art enthusiasts in the run up to TEFAF Maastricht (March 13-22) launches next week in London to promote the fair.

This version of John Constable’s (1776-1837) celebrated painting ‘Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’ sold for $4.5m (£3.1m) at Sotheby’s Old Master sale in New York yesterday. It was an oil sketch with quite a backstory.