Auctioneers

It looks too good to eat, doesn’t it? This is Sotheby’s Surrealist Tea, concocted by the Sotheby’s Cafe as a cheeky marketing gimmick (albeit a tasty one) to promote their Surrealist Art evening sale on February 5 at New Bond Street.

In 1881, at around the time of his 18th birthday, the orphan and Eton College schoolboy John Edmund Hugh Balfour went on a major spending spree.

Christie’s have released global sales figures of £3.92bn, a 10% annual rise. The figure, which includes buyer’s premium, represents the highest sales total in the company’s history.

Dallas-based Heritage Auctions say 2012 was their best year to date, with total sales of more than $860m.

Sotheby’s Institute of Art are to partner Claremont Graduate University in Los Angeles to offer a new Master’s degree in Art Business.

The handwritten draft of one of John Betjeman’s best-known poems, ‘The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel’, is just one of the gems in the next tranche of the Roy Davids Collection to appear at Bonhams Bond Street.

A group of hitherto unknown 19th century documents has come to light revealing illegal trafficking of Chinese people to Latin America where they were forced into slavery.

Frank Marshall’s two-day sale on January 29-30 in Knutsford, Cheshire, will include this painting by Laslett John Pott (1837-1898).

Andrew Smith & Son’s January 29 sale in Winchester includes this winter landscape by Frederick Marinus Kruseman (1816-82).

A rare American coin from a schoolboy’s coin collection was knocked down at auction for £185,000 at Salisbury saleroom Woolley & Wallis this week.

Peter Bainbridge has confirmed to Antiques Trade Gazette that the Qianlong vase at the centre of a highly publicised payment dispute since November 2010 has finally been sold.

Nestled among a 173-lot ‘time capsule’ collection from a Staffordshire estate offered at Hanson’s on January 12, the Old Master picture shown here proved to be the star performer of the sale by some considerable margin.

This 19th century ceramic plaque painted with two duellists in sepia forms part of the collection of the late Bernard Popland, a former championship fencer.

Created by the 20th century Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto, this Paimio seat, with a model no. of 41, is to be included in Sworders’ Decorative Art Sale on January 29 in Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex.

These figures representing The Beatles were manufactured by Subbuteo, the name made famous by the series of table-top games mainly concerning football but also other types of sport.

The names Cartier and Paul Hubner of Augsburg guaranteed the quality of a lapel watch and parcel gilt cup, but their values were enhanced by the names of early 20th century celebrities when they were offered at a recent sale held by Sworders at Stansted Mountfitchet.

Getting the New Year off to a good start at Addisons of Barnard Castle, County Durham, a 20th century blue and white porcelain table screen by the renowned Chinese ceramic artist Wang Bu (1898-1968) improved upon an estimate of just £130-150 to sell for £34,300.

An early photographic album which has sold for a record-breaking £290,000 came into the hands of its first owner 140 years ago as a prize – for winning a pigeon-shooting competition.

Six pencil studies for The Days of Creation by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98) carry an estimate of £150,000-250,000 at Bonhams’ 19th century art sale in New Bond Street on January 23.

Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood’s three-day fine art sale on January 29-31 in Exeter includes several photographs possibly taken by the founder of the Photographic Society, Roger Fenton (1819-69).