Auctions

Archaeological discoveries were a continuous source of inspiration for jewellery in the 19th century. Ancient goldsmithing techniques were studied and relearned. Jewels found during excavations of Roman, Egyptian, Hellenistic and particularly Etruscan sites were copied or reinterpreted.

Two very different Japanese works on paper performed with equal gusto at Sworders’ (25% buyer’s premium) recent Asian art sale, both making 10-times-estimate sums for a vendor from Hertfordshire.

The Paris auction centre Drouot opened its doors again last month in France following the lockdown.

Edvard Munch returned to the subject 'Woman in Moonlight – The Voice' on several occasions.

A memento of the last great age of transatlantic ocean travel can be found at the sale of Peter Karbstein in Düsseldorf on July 11.

It is thought that the German artist Adelheid Dietrich (1827-91), renowned for her incredibly detailed still-lifes of fruit and flowers, completed only 50 paintings during her career.

Georges Lenfant is one of the many unsung titans of the jewellery trade – a Paris workshop pioneering jewellery craftsmanship in the 20th century that produced jewels for the big brand names of the Place Vendôme, including Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier and Mellerio dits Meller.

A Qing dynasty (1644-1911) embroidered silk hanging scroll topped Sworders’ (25% buyer’s premium) Asian art sale on May 28, selling online for £21,000.

Vienna saleroom Dorotheum (28/25/22/18% buyer’s premium) was hoping to send a positive signal for the art market from its latest Old Master sale.

A recent sale at Dorotheum (28/25/22% buyer’s premium) in Vienna was topped by this spectacular diamond and aquamarine tiara-necklace by Cartier London.

For 300 years, from the 1520s to the 1820s, the great Gothic cathedral in Cologne remained unfinished – the building overshadowed by a large crane, which for centuries dominated the panorama on the banks of the Rhine.

In April this year, the founder of the auction house Nusser in Munich, Ursula Nusser, died aged just 66.

The Etruscan revival, that followed in the wake of the discovery of ancient gold jewellery in the 1830s, was the first and most popular of all the historical styles embraced by jewellers of the Victorian period.

Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) recent sale in Paris of books and manuscripts was led at €125,000 (£113,635) by a Nobel Prize for Literature medal awarded in 1947, just four years before his death, to the essayist, critic, novelist and dramatist André Gide.

Collector’s philosophy for his compulsive pottery buying chimed with Buddhist beliefs

The stand-out lot at David Lay’s latest Cornish art sale was an oil by Dod Procter (1891-1972), a leading member of the colony of avant garde artists working in Cornwall in the 1920s-30s.