Auctioneers

Maori boat-shaped feather boxes – or ‘waka huia’ – are infrequent visitors to UK salerooms so it was unusual to see two examples sold in close proximity this summer.

Auction houses everywhere need to change the way they prepare for sales in order to meet increasing demands for detailed condition reports, say Australian auctioneers Mossgreen.

The big question at David Lay’s auctioneers in Penzance next week: Are these bonds worth a few hundred pounds or up to £3.6m each?

Sotheby’s have secured the single-owner collection of Rachel Lambert Mellon, valued at more than $100m, for sale later this year in New York.

The total from last week’s Contemporary art auctions in London may have been a far cry from the record New York series in May where $1.57bn (£975m) of art changed hands, but there was still plenty of action as the market continued on its current buoyant course.

An Arts & Crafts dining room suite made by the prominent Manchester designer Edgar Wood has sold for £42,000 at Gardiner Houlgate of Corsham near Bath.

Discovered at a regional valuation day held in Shropshire by Hansons of Etwall, this Tiffany and Co. silver and mixed-media tea caddy had been a wedding gift and had remained in the family of the vendor since the 1920s.

The story goes that Steiff black mohair bears were produced as mourning bears after the Titanic disaster in April 1912.

A strong selection of Tudric (pewter) and Cymric (silver) creations by Archibald Knox for Liberty & Co was the focus of keen bidding at Bonhams’ decorative arts from 1860 sale in New Bond Street.

One of Claude Monet’s paintings from his celebrated Water Lilies series led a slightly mixed round of Impressionist & Modern art auctions in London last week.

Auctioneer Richard Madley believes he may have set a record for the longest time ever taken to sell a single lot.

The new Chinese representative at John Nicholson’s auctioneers has set out a seven-point plan for how to connect properly with Chinese clients.

Martel Maides of St Peter Port, Guernsey offered a single-strand pearl necklace for sale with a £1500-2000 estimate on the assumption they were natural saltwater pearls – the highest bidder reserving the right to send them for laboratory testing prior to settling the bill.

This postcard sketch by the Chapman Brothers is one of a large number created by well-known figures in art, sport, music TV and film to raise money for Action Against Cancer and the Brain Tumor Charity Silas Pullen Fund.

The Roman artist Bartolomeo Pinelli (1781-1835) is best known as a prolific engraver, selling to tourists his prints portraying the everyday life and costumes of characters encountered in and around the Piazza della Rotonda.

Lyon & Turnbull are to sell the contents of Bantry House, County Cork, one of the best-known historic houses in the Republic of Ireland.

Seventeenth century Dublin trefid spoons are extremely scarce. Last year a single rat-tailed example by Andrew Gregory, 1685, sold for €9000 at Adams of Dublin.

Despite countless offers to leave France, Suzanne Belperron (1900-83) remained in German-occupied Paris throughout the Second World War – a jewellery maker and a Resistance fighter.

A draft of Bob Dylan’s seminal recording Like A Rolling Stone set a new auction record for a pop song manuscript when it sold for $1.7m (£1.04m) to an unnamed collector at Sotheby’s New York on June 24.

Consigned by the debt-ridden Delaware Museum of Art, Isabella and the Pot of Basil by William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) was the top lot of Christie’s sale of Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite and British Impressionist art in London last week.