Auctioneers

Growth “across all value levels of the market” helped global sales at Christie’s increase by 26% to £5.1bn in 2017, says Orlando Rock, chairman of Christie’s UK.

A pendulum clock used in an early longitude trial will be offered for sale by Dreweatts next month.

Heritage Auctions says more than half of its sales are now made through the internet.

The most eye-catching price at the latest series of Old Master and 19th century art sales in New York came at Sotheby’s separately staged auction of drawings from the collection of the late Howard and Saretta Barnet.

Antiques dealership Mallett and book specialist Bloomsbury are to be relaunched this year after being reunited with former stablemate Dreweatts.

Texas-based fine art and collectables specialist Heritage Auctions announced a number of new developments to its mobile app last month. Advances included one-touch mobile bidding and an extension to the barcode scanning facility for coins.

An iconographic gold ring – perhaps once belonging to a bishop or senior member of the clergy in the Yorkshire area – sold for £7100 at Hansons (20% buyer’s premium) in Etwall, Derbyshire.

And still the lofts and attics of UK homes play their part in the lucrative China trade… A c.1800 Imperial yellow cushion cover was one example offered at Trevanion & Dean (19% buyer’s premium) in Whitchurch.

Roman and 20th century poetry, science and sarcasm, Arctic printing, Mayan discoveries, cranes and a porcupine, as well as a miniature master of calligraphy all featured in one of the first large London book sales of the year.

A selection of stand-out lots in upcoming sales.

A previously unrecorded painting attributed to Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, the Italian Old Master known as il Guercino (1591-1666), has been consigned to Cambridge auction house Cheffins.

A set of five Victorian diamond six-point star brooches sold for £26,000 at Golding Young & Mawer (20% buyer’s premium) on January 24. As each star has a hook fitting and a screw fitting for attachment, the set was probably once part of a suite consisting of frames for a tiara, necklace, earrings and brooches.

Extending from the tip of Manhattan as far north as 42nd Street, this large-scale Map of the City of New York of 1850 identifies by means of symbols and a key the city’s churches, schools, hotels, public buildings, parks, cemeteries and other places of interest.