Collectables

Must-have Christmas presents in the Sixties and Seventies, Sasha dolls have remarkable appeal today.

Presentation copies of The Bostonians and a volume containing the first bookform appearance of The Turn of the Screw were among the highlights of a large Henry James collection offered in almost 50 lots as part of a Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium) sale.

Possibly the first autograph manuscript of a complete work by Bela Bartok ever seen at auction, a working manuscript for the complete score of the original version of his Second Rhapsody for Violin and Piano (BB96) was bid to £250,000 in a music sale held by Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium).

Second World War technology starred at Tennants’ (20% buyer’s premium) militaria sale at Leyburn.

Illustrated here are two of the 20 hand-coloured litho plates, many showing the Crystal Palace in the background and each with a rhyming couplet below, that make up Blondin’s Marvellous Feats.

A gentleman retires to his designated smoker’s chair, picks up his meerschaum pipe and Dunhill lighter and puffs away contentedly by his hearth… a vanished scenario in the UK today but recreated in the antiques world in these three items from December auctions.

Some of the works on offer at BRAFA are simply too quirky to fit into any time-honoured collecting category, but they are often responsible for creating an eyecatching draw to a particular stand.

This is Liza Minelli as you might never have seen her – in this Polish poster by Wiktor Górka for the film Kabaret, which was created in 1973 for the first year of the film’s release in Poland.

Whatever chaos faces hundreds of thousands of commuters on the railways as we enter the New Year, the better-ordered world of model trains steams on to continued success.

A fine Pushkin collection, running to a dozen lots in all, was a major attraction in the Russian section of at a Christie’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale.

It was around this time of year when wealthy skiers with chalets to decorate would dial in from the slopes of the world’s most prestigious resorts to take part in Christie’s South Kensington’s annual Ski Sale.

Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the Holy Places…, an elephant folio work of 1865 that sold for a treble-estimate £45,000 at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium) on November 14, was a rare and complete proof copy of a monumental book of Palestinian views recognised as one of the scarcer colour-plate books on the Middle East.

The season, the spirit in question and the location of the sale put this bottle of Lagavulin whisky, below, into the spotlight.

A selective one-day 'Samurai Armor Fair' launches next month in Amsterdam.

Peter Finer and his two sons Roland and Redmond specialise in antique arms and armour from the Bronze Age to the 19th century and they have been crossing the Atlantic to exhibit at the Winter Antiques Show for over 30 years. Here, they explain why.