News

UK: WHAT is so extraordinary about a stuffed fish, you might ask? Well, in the annals of piscatoria, they do not come much rarer than this golden roach – taken from the River Frays on October 8, 1911 and offered at Phillips Bayswater on February 20, 2001.

UK: THE copy of T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom offered by Lyon & Turnbull of Edinburgh on February 17 was one of the 170 or so signed, “complete” copies of the privately printed, subscribers’ edition of 1926 and in the original brown morocco binding, illustrated here.

Tiara by Diana Scarisbrick, published by Chronicle Books with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston US and distributed by Hi Marketing, London. Tel: 020 7738 7751/email: hi.marketing@btinternet.com ISBN 0811827178 £16.95 hb

UK: GETTING on for 100 lots in the Phillips sale of February 16 comprised books from one private English collection that were characterised by smart and expensive bindings. Job lots were common but I have illustrated one lot that contained just two books, on a related theme and in matching bindings, and have picked out a few others that presented only one or two of the more valuable books each, but which were unfortunately not to be found among the composite illustrations used in the catalogue.

UK: THE FIRST Phillips sale of the year gets a largely pictorial treatment here, but not everything that I selected for report was illustrated in the catalogue and a number of other highlights are described elsewhere (see "Job lots with a difference", above).

UK: SUCH has been the surge in popularity of English samplers and related textiles over the past few years (driven largely by American collectors who can no longer afford their own folk art) that any picture with even a hint of natural fibre is guaranteed to attract interest at auction.

UK: ALREADY the king of the bottles and jugs collectables market which he has done so much to pioneer, Alan Blakeman’s latest successful sale of advertising collectables where some 410 lots totalled £44,651 has persuaded him to add an extra such event to the two specialist sales a year he has previously held at his South Yorkshire rooms.