International (print edition)

The September 25 Boston Collects sale at the Massachusetts branch of Doyle (28% buyer’s premium) included items deaccessioned by the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, for the benefit of its collection.

Eugene de Blaas (1843-1931) made his reputation painting genre scenes that captured beautiful young women chatting, flirting and working in his native Italy.

During a summer walk-through of a home in Prides Crossing, Massachusetts, Frank Kaminski saw something that compelled his attention. Emerging from beneath a pile of boxes and blankets was a highly detailed carved paw foot.

The Cybis company, founded in 1940 in Astoria, New York, by Boleslaw Cybis (1895-1957) and his wife Marja (1905-58) produced porcelain figures for almost 80 years before it closed in 2019. Among its best-known models is a chess set.

One of the biggest attractions at the Exposition Universelle, held in Paris in 1878, was Le Grand Ballon Captif, a huge tethered balloon, constructed by Baptiste Henri Jacques Giffard, a pioneer of airship travel.

No self-respecting clock enthusiast was going to let an early 19th century precision longcase clock get away for the guide of €1000 in an auction held by Historia (27% buyer’s premium) in Berlin.

The Bavarian artist Adam Albrecht (1786-1862), head of a family of successful painters, was known primarily for his depictions of battles, several of which he had experienced first-hand.

Chillida and Giacometti compositions are sought after by bidders

An early ceramic work by Otto Lindig was one of the stars at a recent sale at Mehlis (24% buyer’s premium) in Plauen.

Paintings by the Dutch artist Rachel Ruysch seldom make it to market and when they do, regularly command six-figure and on occasions even seven-figure prices.

Vending machine and music box could once be found on railway station platforms to serve passengers

Since 1925 the Deutsches Museum in Munich has been exhibiting a complex and highly decorated 18th century calculating machine that bears the inscription Braun Invenit – Vayringe Fecit.

The multi-talented Belgian designer and architect Henry van de Velde spent many of his most productive years in the east German city of Weimar, where he lived and worked from 1899-1917.

Although he was rejected by the Berlin art academy, Eduard Hildebrandt, who was born in Danzig in 1818, went on to become one of the most celebrated landscape painters of his time. He was without doubt one of the most widely travelled.

The two early pottery lots destined to tie for top-lot status in the September 19 sale at Roland NY (30% buyer’s premium) in Glen Cove, New York, came from the same consignor, and from the same setting in their home.

Rago, the Lambertville, New Jersey auction house, began handling pieces by Paul Evans (1931-87) in the 1990s, when the classic sculpture-front furnishings were selling for as little as $25,000.

Lots of Americans wanted to fight Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Those too young could put a coin in the Poison this Rat trade simulator.

Backing information from the consignor supported a ‘masterpiece’ furniture item by Swedish designer

Prints from David Hockney’s (1937-2026) Moving Focus series are among the artist’s most sought-after work from the 1980s. The vibrantly coloured images picturing Hotel Acatlán are especially prized.

French neoclassicist Marie Guilhelmine Benoist (1768-1826) is another of the long-overlooked female artists whose work is being reappraised by the market in the 21st century.