Auctioneers

This pair of Qing vases caught the eye of Hertfordshire auctioneer Richard Kluk when valuing jewellery at a London home.

Real rarities and record breakers are among items that feature in this first of a couple of reviews of more literary lots from the wealth of summer sales. Here the focus is principally on works of the last 200 years or so – and includes such diverse characters as Hugh the Heron and the Invisible Man.

A painting by the Victorian Neo-classicist painter John Godward (1861-1922) not seen on the market since 1925 is going under the hammer at Bonhams in New Bond Street on September 26.

A scarce Meissen figure, but no stranger to these pages in recent months (see ATG No 2349), Count Bruhl’s Tailor rode his goat to more success at Gildings (15% buyer’s premium) on September 4.

Accounts of wars and skirmishes in the southern states of North America and Mexico were one notable feature of an August 23 sale held in San Francisco.

Bonhams’ chairman Robert Brooks is retiring from the auction house after selling the company to private equity group Epiris.

Posters advertising the first-ever public screening of a film, which took place in Paris in 1895, have hardly ever emerged outside France. While one is known in an American collection, the appearance of another at Sotheby’s latest online film posters auction understandably caused some excitement.

West Sussex auction house Bellmans has reshuffled its top team following the departure of managing director Jonathan Pratt, who left to join Dreweatts last month.

Considering that W Britain began making his revolutionary hollowcast toy soldiers only in 1893, a set dating from just three years later certainly deserves the tag ‘early’.

Two lots offering heraldic manuscripts – one of them being of particular regional interest – produced the highest bids in a mixed sale of collectables and militaria held in Shrewsbury.