Auctioneers

This seasonal watercolour of figures ice skating in the Lake District (below) sold for a mid-estimate £3600 at local Cumbria saleroom Mitchells (20% buyer’s premium) on November 28.

Three modestly valued works in regional sales, including a mini-sleeper at an Essex auction.

High-priced luxury handbags and other luxury goods made the most money at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) sale of Costume, Accessories and Textiles at Leyburn but collectors’ interest was more focused on a private collection of hat pins.

A copy of WB Yeats’ The Wanderings of Oisin… offered in a recent Irish sale was an example of Fisher Unwin’s 1892 second issue. That is rare enough, but this copy bore an inscription that made it very special indeed.

A notable feature of the end-of-year book sales in 2018 was the number of online auctions held by the major salerooms.

Packed with a varied selection of precisely 1000 lots, a very thick catalogue rounded off one saleroom’s year in a December 11-12 sale.

Showing hardly any signs of wear and signed by JK Rowling – and originally acquired at a special signing at Harrods, as revealed by a laid-in ticket – a near pristine first issue copy of 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone' of 1997, appeared at auction earlier this month.

Illuminated manuscript sales of recent times will be the subject of a future review, but seen here is something a little different in that line offered as the very first lot in a December 1 sale of such material held by Bloomsbury Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

A single-owner private collection, including significant works by artists from the Modern British canon, will be sold at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet on January 15.

A lavish Viennese gold-mounted porcelain tureen and stand – the epitome of Habsburg court luxury during the reign of the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI – topped Bonhams’ Fine European Ceramics sale in London on December 6.

A table designed by a teenaged Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-52) for Windsor Castle sold for £23,500 (plus 21% buyer’s premium) at Gorringe’s of Lewes on December 4.

Penguin patties, seal cutlets and roast reindeer – and lots of whisky – were on the menu for a famous meal which was followed by ‘Sledges at 12.30’.

The two sewing boxes modelled as houses shown below were made for different markets but both had strong appeal to UK collectors.

‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, ‘The Mystery of the Marie Roget’ and ‘The Purloined Letter’ are among now famous works that are to be found in the newly discovered first issue copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales shown below.