Latest News Articles by Roland Arkell
A price to remember – spotlight on mourning
15 May 2026The grim mortality rate of 17th century Britain precipitated a taste for memento mori jewellery that reached its height of popularity in the early 1700s.
Hong Kong auctions get off to an auspicious start
08 May 2026Sotheby’s Hong Kong’s Asian Art Week was led by the earliest extant court painting by the Italian Jesuit painter Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766).
Descendant consigns two prime minister portraits to Essex auction
08 May 2026Portraits of the third and fourth prime ministers of Great Britain are among the highlights of a fine collection of British portraiture that comes for sale at Sworders on May 19.
Works with a licence to thrill: book collectors' first editions in demand at auction
08 May 2026Fine collection of British modern novels amassed over decades includes earliest editions with dust jackets
Quentin Blake originals bring back fond memories at auction
08 May 2026Arabel and her anarchic pet raven, Mortimer, were first introduced in 1974 on the children’s television show Jackanory.
Books, maps and prints auction previews
08 May 2026A selection of upcoming highlights at UK, US and European auctions
First days of the US and much more
08 May 2026Ahead of a very busy period for the trade, we kick off our guide to the events coming up with a London fair marking the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence.
Unrecorded photograph of Oscar Wilde discovered at Gloucestershire auction
06 May 2026A seemingly unrecorded photograph of the poet and playwright Oscar Wilde taken during his time at Magdalen College, Oxford has been found by Gloucestershire auction house Dominic Winter.
Two auction records smashed in Islamic and Indian art with 14th century glass and 17th century scientific instrument
05 May 2026Two auction records were broken during the London spring series of Islamic and Indian art.
Victorian topaz girandole brooch takes top honours at Scottish sale
01 May 2026The 18th and 19th centuries were the golden age of topaz.
Vendor ‘shocked and delighted’ with Swiss pocket watch auction result
01 May 2026The watch-makers in the Vallée de Joux in Switzerland were a textbook 19th century cottage industry – typically self-employed men, and some women, working either in the ateliers based in the hamlet of Crêt-Meylan or at home. Seldom did they receive credit for their great skill.
Earliest known Castiglione court painting to headline Sotheby’s Hong Kong series
01 May 2026Asian Art Week at Sotheby’s Hong Kong will be led by the earliest extant court painting by the Italian Jesuit artist Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766).
Not just castles on castle-tops
01 May 2026Cathedrals, palaces and abbeys were also among the sights featured as British tourism developed
Asian art auction previews
01 May 2026While May’s series of UK Asian art auctions lacks the overall focus of the Asian Art in London initiative in the autumn or the pomp of other spring events in New York or Hong Kong, it remains a key moment in the calendar.
Inscriptions tell tales of colonial silver items
01 May 2026The group of Chinese ‘export’ silver offered by Gorringe’s (25% buyer’s premium) in Lewes on April 21 came by descent from Reginald Follett Codrington Hedgeland (1874-1967), an Oxford graduate from Exeter who joined the Chinese Maritime Customs Service in 1898.
Personal library of a pioneering British scholar of Armenian and Iranian studies comes to auction
28 April 2026Volumes from the personal library of a pioneering British scholar of Armenian and Iranian studies form part of Sworders’ latest Books and Maps auction.
Second Titanic watch said to have gone down with Astor sells in a US saleroom
24 April 2026Two years after a Wiltshire auction house set a record for Titanic memorabilia with ‘the watch recovered from the body of John Jacob Astor’ at £900,000, another timekeeper making precisely the same claim has sold in Chicago for $800,000 (£592,000).
Morris & Co Labours of the Month tiles work wonders in Edinburgh to reap a £75,000 auction reward
24 April 2026The latest Design Since 1860 sale at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh was topped by four Morris & Co tile panels depicting the Labours of the Months dated to c.1865.
The world of dealer Gordon Reece comes to Wiltshire
24 April 2026As a dealer, collector and enthusiast of ethnographic art, Gordon Reece spent a lifetime travelling the globe in search of artefacts.