Auctioneers

Rising costs in the wake of the government ban on credit card fees are forcing auctioneers to end card transactions or consider raising buyer’s premium.

Catalogued simply as ‘a pair of English soft-paste porcelain models of parrots’, these rare 18th century figures by Bow sold at Thomas Watson in Darlington, County Durham, for £16,000 (plus 24% buyer’s premium) on May 15.

Called to look at some toy trains in the home of a lady who had recently died at a great age, Special Auction Services (17.5% buyer’s premium) specialist Hugo Marsh was surprised to be shown two early and rare Bing items. They had been collected by the lady’s first husband and stored away since he was killed in the Second World War.

Two targets for clockwork toy car collectors on the occasions they appear at auction are the CIJ Alfa Romeo P2 racing car and the Gunthermann model of Captain Campbell’s Blue Bird. Good examples of both came up for sale recently.

Bearing a title that translates as ‘The Book of Correction of Optics for those who have Sight and Mind’, an early 14th century Arabic manuscript made a much higher than expected £450,000 during the recent Islamic week of sales in London.

Offered as part of a recent online sale, a scarce work by Walter Savage Landor that had remained unsold in a New Bond Street auction only last July finally achieved, on April 25 of this year, the high-estimate sum of £2400 that both salerooms had been looking for.

Barbara Jones joins a growing band whose peacetime work is also now in strong demand.

A 1731, first printed edition of Wycliffe’s 14th century English version of the New Testament was bid to a record £10,000 against an estimate of £200-300 in a recent Nottingham auction.

Fellows has expanded its London presence with a new office in a Georgian townhouse in Mayfair which will allow an improved viewing schedule for auction previews.

Private buying carried away two top-selling works at John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium) in Haslemere, Surrey.

Guided at £200-400, a pair of 17th century British school portraits (one pictured below) went on to fetch £1150 each at Halls (20% buyer’s premium) of Shrewsbury.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s autograph manuscript of one of the 13 short stories that in 1905 were gathered together in book form as The Return of Sherlock Holmes was offered in New York recently.