London

No record exists of any signed, autograph letter in the hand of Mao Zedong being previously sold on the international market, said Sotheby’s (25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) of the example it offered as part of a June 11 sale of manuscripts, Continental books and music.

The Antiquities Dealers’ Association (ADA) has said dealers and auctioneers should stand up to “the politicisation of the antiquities trade” in the wake of a row surrounding the sale of a £4m sculpture.

The proportion of picture dealers standing at fairs has risen significantly during the last two years according to findings from the latest biennial Society of London Art Dealers (SLAD) survey.

A Pre-Raphaelite drawing once owned by LS Lowry drew lively competition at the latest round of 19th century art sales in London.

Vivid and lifelike, the lithograph of an Ariel Toucan shown below first appeared in a monograph by British naturalist John Gould (1804-81), 'The Bird Man'. Despite being in the hand of his wife Elizabeth (1804-41), this, like most of the illustrations in John’s publications, was long considered to be essentially his work.

Just four months after identifying two tiny compositional drawings as the work of John Constable (1776- 1837) and selling them for close to £90,000, west London saleroom Chiswick Auctions struck gold again with a third ‘rediscovered’ landscape.

The classic ‘orange’ Pulcini glass bird is deemed the most common of the five designed by Pianon.

A 2m-wide early 1950s sofa offered for £7000 on the stand of The Modern Warehouse was one of the larger objects attracting buyers at the latest 'Art & Antiques Fair Olympia'.

Two musical boxes catching the eye and ear among the small vertu sections at summer silver sales.

For three years now Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) has, in addition to its high-profile auctions, been holding fortnightly, online-only timed sales that in their diverse content, it feels, act as a useful bellwether for the book world at large.

A black and white chalk on paper drawing of Jupiter and Antiope by Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) was among the highlight sales during London Art Week (LAW).

The 52-lot auction of furniture, paintings and works of art collected by members of the Rothschild family was among the most animated during a packed week of London showpiece sales.

In what could well be a first, all 10 of Christie’s top evening sale lots on June 17 were sculptures. The group comprised the works of four blue-chip sculptors – Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Elisabeth Frink and Barry Flanagan – and contributed much of the overall total at £11.3m.

Much of the pre-sale publicity from Bonhams’ June 15 Mod Brit focused on Eric Gill’s (1882-1942) Girl with a Comb in her Hair (1928) – a market-fresh carved head and torso valued at £200,000-300,000 and admired for its unusual pose and luxuriant wavy hair.

After a bullish 2018 for the major Modern British art sales in London – during which Christie’s posted its strongest evening sale to date – results from the first ‘Mod Brit’ series of 2019 looked a little flat by comparison.