Auctions

According to patent documents dated February 1928, Woodlite headlamps invented by a William G Woods of Los Angeles were said to give the driver better illumination of distant objects ahead.

While furniture and books fully justified its title, The Oxford Library Sale at Mallams (22.5% buyer’s premium) was led by a surprise star: a rather lowly regarded gesso bust of the sort that would have been a minor decoration to such a room.

A collection of automaton advertising panels formed by two dedicated enthusiasts over a 20-year period will go under the hammer on March 12 at Drouot in Paris in a sale mounted by Auction Art Rémy le Fur.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period February 6-12, 2020. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

The market for both film and music posters is booming but original artwork for such designs can also be a very collectable option for buyers.

The collection of the late Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Seeler comprising the contents of her home in Forest Hill Gardens went under the hammer at Millea Bros (25% buyer’s premium) in New Jersey on January 30.

As well as painting sunny pictures of children on the beaches of Cornwall, Dorothea Sharp (1874-1955) frequently turned her paintbrush to still-lifes.

Publisher tried to link book to the poet to boost sales but a revised version was issued instead

The Victorian artist John Bagnold Burgess (1829- 97), grandson of a painter who counted Thomas Gainsborough among his pupils, was best known as a painter of genre scenes.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

The recent auction of 20th century design at Sworders (25% buyer’s premium) in Stansted Mountfitchet was underpinned by more than 60 consignments from the estate of MJ Long.

Shin-hanga, meaning ‘new prints’, emerged in Japan during the early 20th century. Aimed at Western tastes, the artistic movement combined the traditional colourful woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e with nostalgic and romanticised Japanese subjects.

Sold for £4600 in a February 6 sale held in the Chichester salerooms of Stride & Son (18% buyer’s premium) was an album of cut-paper work produced by Elizabeth Cobbold c.1810-20.

Modestly catalogued as English School, 1960s, a Modern British study of a head emerged as one of the top-selling pictures at Sworders (25% buyer’s premium) in Stansted Mountfitchet.

Star turn among some 120 lots of playing cards offered as part of a Stroud Auctions (18% buyer’s premium) sale was the last to be offered. A complete set of Charles Hodges’ Astronomical Playing Cards, it sold online for £3000.

A 16th century composite suit of armour that had been assembled by a specialist curator in this field at the Metropolitan Museum of Art proved to be the toast of a sale held by Morphy.

In 1914 Western interest in African art was in its infancy. When these two wooden anthropomorphic spoons were shown as part of an exhibition of African wood statuary at the photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s New York gallery in that year it represented a key moment.

A single collection of 490 pieces of Moorcroft dating from the 1890s to modern limited editions offered an overall view of the market when sold at Hansons (20% buyer’s premium).

A sale at Oise Enchères yielded a strong price for a bronze by the French sculptor Louis Hottot (1829-1905).