Auctioneers

TECHNOLOGY is increasingly important in the art market but a pair of oils by the Anglo-Australian artist William Blamire Young (1862-1935), is believed to be the first significant work identified and consigned to auction through Christie’s iPhone application.

Special Auction Services (SAS), founded in 1991, is moving to larger premises in October. Currently based in Kennetholme, Midgham, near Reading they are relocating six miles away to New Greenham Park, Newbury.

THE five City of London livery companies with particular connections with wood (Carpenters, Furniture-Makers, Joiners, Turners and Upholders) are currently raising funds for the Arboretum Trust with a charity auction titled Branching Out.

CHISWICK Auctions are set to sell one of the most important early paintings by the German Expressionist Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966) to have come to market in recent years.

A UNIQUE archive of original Enid Blyton material is being offered for sale by her elder daughter's estate at Ilkley auctioneers Hartley's on September 15.

IT looks like a flying saucer, and to those viewing it on the monastery wall in Verona where it had hung since the Middle Ages, it can have had hardly less of an impact.

PURITAN spoons are not uncommon survivors in English silver but, for reasons still largely unknown, Scottish examples are very rare. To date, only nine hallmarked or provincial examples are known.

THE Viennese mahogany commode, pictured here at the top, has undergone a remarkable transformation since it sold along with its companion pair at auction in 1993 as part of the Thurn and Taxis sale.

FOUR sketches by Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais, found tucked inside covers of Led Zeppelin LPs, have been withdrawn from sale at Chilcotts auctioneers in Tiverton, Devon, because of a “misunderstanding over ownership” according to the auctioneers.

ON Wednesday, September 8, Kent auctioneers Ibbett Mosely will hold their first sale in new premises at 125 High Street, Sevenoaks, Kent TN13 1UT.

CHRISTIE’S have announced worldwide sales of £1.7bn ($2.57m) for the first half of 2010 – 46 per cent up on the same period for 2009.

THIS 20in (50cm) high gilt and clear glass vase of Islamic inspiration is the central element of the three-piece garniture discovered by Rayleigh, Essex auctioneers Staceys in a home near Southend-on-Sea.

Led Zeppelin, Robert Burns and a 14-year-old John Everett Millais might seem unlikely bedfellows. But a group of four pencil drawings which have surfaced at the Devon auctioneers Chilcotts of Tiverton appear to link the three.

THE family firm of Gildings Auctioneers, established since 1987 in Market Harborough, are to open additional premises on the edge of Leicester.

The late Fred Dibnah's 1912 Aveling and Porter Ltd steam tractor fetched £240,000 at Cheffins vintage auction on July 24, selling to Michael Oliver, chairman of Knutsford-based manufacturer Oliver Valves.

CHRISTIE’S are launching a fair during Frieze week for dealers and publishers specialising in contemporary editions. The auctioneers' South Kensington saleroom will be given over to the event, titled Multiplied, focused primarily on prints, photography, sculpture and artists’ books.

Among a series of records for British watercolours posted during Sotheby's sale entitled An Exceptional Eye: A Private British Collection on July 14, the most spectacular price was the £2.1m bid for this striking view of the Lake of Albano and Castel Gandolfo by John Robert Cozens (1752-1797).

A DEBT-plagued university in Boston has entered into an agreement with Sotheby’s to lease rather than sell off works from its museum’s $350m art collection.

“ED seriously injured late today when train hit car – Ritch”. When a shocked John Steinbeck received this telegram in May, 1948, he left immediately for Monterey, California, but by the time he got there his good friend Ed Ricketts, the man he later described as being “part of my brain for 18 years”, was dead.

EAST Anglia auctioneers Sworders have ceased holding sales in Sudbury. The former Olivers saleroom in Burkitt’s Lane, Sudbury will now become an office and storage facility with all future consignments removed for sale to Stansted Mountfitchet.