UK

A trio of tickets issued by one of the UK’s first passenger railways sold for £1050 at a recent sale held by David Duggleby (21% buyer’s premium) in Scarborough.

The latest Impressionist & Modern art auction series in London generated decent competition on a few key lots but the overall total was the lowest for a February series in this category since 2016.

The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle was among the buyers when Tennants sold 13 quilts that belonged to Durham hill farmer Hannah Hauxwell (1926-2018) on February 9.

Travelling from Glasgow to the south of England courtesy of a commission bid, this Hornby-Dublo train EDG 7 tank goods set, right, went at 10 times the lower estimate at McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium) sale on February 1.

Bonhams’ (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) latest sale of 19th century pictures in London may have been small – running to just over 100 lots – but what it lacked in size it made up with the broad scope of its contents.

Two unusual and successful lots from a February 20 sale held by Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium) of Ipswich.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

This 1962 photograph of artist Lucio Fontana, below, is included in the UK’s first solo show of works by Ugo Mulas (1928-73).

The plethora of single-collection sales at the start of the year was not at the expense of old-fashioned auctions offering good-quality offerings across the range of dealing and collecting – such as the Winter Fine Arts sale at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) of Dorchester.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from March 5-16, 2019.

The sale at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (plus 21% buyer’s premium) on January 29 – an event dominated by the multi-estimate performance of a Qianlong mark vase in the Ming taste sold at £460,000 (see ATG No 2378) – also included a hardwood (probably olivewood), bone and mother-of-pearl inlaid model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

What seems to have been an overdue clear-out at Monmouth Trading Standards department led to half a dozen lots of imperial weights and measures being consigned to Stroud Auctions (18% buyer’s premium).

A small group of lots in a recent Edinburgh sale were once part of the library of the late 5th Earl of Lovelace at Torridon House.

Helped by conservatively pitched estimates, a clutch of middle-market Orientalist pictures achieved some modest growth in value on their first return to auction in three decades.

A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening… is the single volume that I have selected from a recent Gloucestershire auction in which job lots were very much in evidence and that acted as a sort of extra, clearing-the-decks sort of exercise in the saleroom’s calendar.