Auctioneers

Figural clocks combining novelty and automaton features were very popular in the 19th century, many of them being of French manufacture.

Recent Old Master paintings in Vienna and Cologne have yielded some predicted but also unexpected results including a high price for a work by a German better known for his poems and plays than his paintings.

In 1953 Pan Am Airlines approached Rolex with a request for a watch that could show the time simultaneously in two different time zones.

A major work by French academy painter Edouard Joseph Dantan (1846-97), unseen for over a century, has emerged at an auction in Colchester.

The appeal of this 16in (40.5cm) tall French silvered bronze of a ballerina offered at Wotton Auction Rooms (21% buyer’s premium) on May 23, undoubtedly owed much of its success to its provenance.

ATG’s weekly selection of items on sale at auctions and dealerships.

Sensational results for Scottish author in Lyon & Turnbull sale recall a doomed family link...

Criterion Auctioneers has opened a valuation office in South Kensington in the hope of snaring some of the business left by the closure of Christie’s in the area.

The Malayan artist Cheong Soo Pieng (1917-83) is hardly a household name in Europe. Virtually all of his paintings that have sold at auction in recent decades came under the hammer in Hong Kong or Singapore.

In recent years, Bonhams has uncovered several previously unrecorded English Golden Age clocks and at the sale of Fine Clocks on June 29 it will be presenting a recently discovered longcase clock by London maker John Fromanteel.

“A masterpiece of Flemish book illumination,” said Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s premium) of a rare manuscript compendium of texts on chivalry, heraldry, nobility and the rules of war offered in its May 16-18 sales series.

Bid to a double-estimate €42,000 (£36,290) in a Ketterer Kunst (20% buyer’s premium) sale of May 22 was a very rare, 1566-67 Lisbon first of 'Chronica da felicissimo rei dom Emanuel…'

The three lots briefly described here were not among the very highest priced lots in a Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of May 24 – but all brought record bids.

Spring sale results provide promising upturn as Irish art market shows signs of recovery.

Condition leaves a little to be desired, but the spine of this copy of Sinclair Lewis’ 'Main Street' and the matching details on the jacket mark it out as a 1920 first, published by Harcourt, Brace & Howe of New York.