Print Edition

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period January 8-16, 2019. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

MADAM – Recently I was interested in an Chinese tile for sale at a well-known auction that was estimated at £5000-8000.

Salisbury saleroom Woolley & Wallis regained top spot in the UK regional auction market for 2018, while the investment at Chiswick Auctions has begun to bear fruit. These were just two of the findings in ATG's annual review of the hammer totals and trends at some of the leading salerooms in the UK and Ireland.

A single-owner collection, including significant works from the Modern British canon, sold for £541,200 at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet last week.

Estimated at just £150-200, a sardonyx cameo ring sold to a dealer for £39,000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium) at auction.

The European Parliament is to vote on a new law this week that would introduce extra red tape for dealers in antiques and antiquities operating within the European Union.

Henry Adams has achieved an auction record for Cedric Morris (1889-1982), completing a hat-trick of high prices for the artist-plantsman at the Chichester saleroom.

A selection of eight top items sold at regional salerooms who reported hammer totals for ATG's annual round-up of the auction market for 2018.

A legal claim lodged against Christie’s in New York has highlighted some of the practices relating to private sales that top-end auctioneers make behind closed doors.

A round-up of art and antiques news from the previous seven days, including Defra's notice regarding the movement of CITES-listed natural history items in the event of a No deal Brexit,

Topped by the 17th century Dutch bottles at £30,000 (see ATG No 2375), the year’s first sale at Hannam’s (23% buyer’s premium) had other treasures among the 2000 lots including the French bronze figural torchères, right.

If the Battle of Britain is your collecting field, then the sale of a Kent collection held in late 2018 would have been a major draw.

A work once said to have “…set the course for the modern world by its effective destruction of the anthropocentric view of the universe” made a rare auction appearance.

'Across the Continent. Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way' is a well-known hand coloured litho print issued by Currier & Ives, although the publisher’s imprint has been cut off the bottom of the example shown below.

The National Botanic Gardens of Wales spreads out into 500-plus acres at Llanarthne in the Carmarthenshire countryside and boasts a spectacular structure designed by Norman Foster: the largest single-span glasshouse in the world.

MADAM – You continue to receive letters from dealers complaining about buyer’s premiums.

The continued interest in Victorian music boxes in this age of Spotify and streaming was evident when three were among the 1500-lot sale held by Unique Auctions (17.5% buyer’s premium) to launch the new year.