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A selection of three works priced under £1200 at UK regional auctions.

Topping the results list at a recent sale at Grisebach (30/25/20% buyer’s premium) in Berlin was a work by the German Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner that was created on island in the Baltic.

One of the most iconic photographic images of war came under the hammer at a recent Westlicht (20% buyer’s premium) auction in Vienna.

Since the early 1990s Wolfgang Thillmann, a German and philosophy teacher, has devoted himself to collecting Thonet bentwood furniture and become an internationally acknowledged expert in the process.

Did the final days of 2018 provide the year’s greatest discovery? Bidders who pursued a bronze dragon head from €20,000 to €2.4m (£2.2m) at the Drouot in Paris on December 17 certainly thought so.

“Every specialist has an object that they dream of having in their sales,” says Matthew Rubinger, Christie’s head of handbags and accessories. “For me, it’s the aluminium Explorer trunk by Louis Vuitton. The market is full of silver-coloured metal trunks, but this piece is their inspiration.”

Brexit uncertainty. Tick. A weak pound. Tick. The ivory ban. Tick. Some of the themes that will permeate 2019 are already clear. But what else might the next 12 months bring for the art and antiques trade and its buying audience? ATG does a little crystal-ball gazing...

A new auction record for the idiosyncratic stonewares of the Martin brothers was established at Phillips’ Design sale in New York.

Estimated at £40-60, this unusual Chinese scholar’s object took £32,000 (plus buyer’s premium) at a recent auction at Rogers Jones in Cardiff.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period December 13-19, 2018. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Posters covering band or artist appearances during the embryonic days of their development are proving very popular at auction – a trend underlined by a group of 1966 Pink Floyd designs.

On Thursday, December 20, Michael Bloomstein of Brighton was paying the following for bulk scrap against a gold fix of: $1255.00 / €1072.71 / £988.69.

A round-up of art and antiques news from the previous seven days, including a report on fakes in the vintage whisky market.

Never out of fashion, the best furniture by Robert Thompson is going through one of its periodic surges – as evident at Wilkinson’s Doncaster rooms last month (ATG No 2369) and at Sworders of Stansted Mountfichet (ATG No 2363) in October.

Philip and Claire Crosthwaite, who run Hingham Antiques Fairs in the south Norfolk town, have embarked on a new venture: launching the Norfolk and Suffolk Antique Dealers Association (NASADA).

Illuminated manuscript sales of recent times will be the subject of a future review, but seen here is something a little different in that line offered as the very first lot in a December 1 sale of such material held by Bloomsbury Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

Chinese bidders were the driving force at this autumn’s German and Austrian auctions of Asian art.

The arrival of the ivory ban in late 2019 is not the only piece of imminent legislation that the antiques trade should be aware of. The efforts of global art and antiques trade body CINOA are currently focused on two broad issues: anti-money-laundering legislation and laws surrounding the import of cultural goods.

A copy of WB Yeats’ The Wanderings of Oisin… offered in a recent Irish sale was an example of Fisher Unwin’s 1892 second issue. That is rare enough, but this copy bore an inscription that made it very special indeed.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.