Auctioneers

THE unexpected highlight of the sale conducted by Cheffins of Cambridge on June 9-10 came courtesy of this mahogany writing table. Estimated at £4000-6000, it sold at £68,000 (plus 17.5 per cent buyer's premium).

THERE can be no more important figure in British inter-War aviation than the aircraft designer Reginald Joseph Mitchell (1895-1937).

FROM perfume bottles and menu holders to vases and car mascots, the glass creations of René Lalique remain consistently appealing to a varied gamut of buyers.

THE troubled internet entrepreneur and art collector Halsey Minor, who in March was ordered to hand over $6.6m for unpaid items ‘bought’ at Sotheby’s, has won a parallel legal battle with Christie’s.

THE first slice of the Longridge collection of early British pottery and European vernacular works of art, formed over 30 years by American Syd Levethan, was sold in two sessions for £2.93m by Christie's in King Street on June 10-11.

WITH the retreat from Dunkirk so much in the news at the moment, Aguttes have a particularly topical offering in their June 18 sale of manuscripts, postcards and historical documents.

This jewelled and gold mounted hardstone model of a turkey by Fabergé was among the highlights of Christie's Russian art sale in London on June 8.

THIS Regency mahogany Carlton House desk, embellished with barber's pole stringing and marquetry fleur-de-lys medallions, was consigned for sale at Moore Allen & Innocent of Cirencester and attracted seven phone lines and others in the room.

LINCOLN saleroom Thomas Mawer and Son has been sold to Grantham auctioneer Colin Young.

SOMETHING for the dealer with almost everything, a personalised car registration plate with the legend ANT IK is being sold later this month.

SETTING the highest price ever seen at auction for Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), this lifesize sculpture of a mother and child, overshot its £60,000-80,000 estimate at Sotheby's latest sale of Modern British art in London before being knocked down to a private buyer at £120,000.

ANGELIC rosy-cheeked village girls were George Clausen’s (1852-1944) staple subject matter. During his time living in the Berkshire village of Cookham Dean, Clausen was particularly preoccupied with this idyllic rural subject matter and, from around 1889, he began to make a series of studies and paintings of a local child, Rose Grimsdale.

THE original autograph stock book of Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, found in a box of girlie magazines, sold for £25,000 (plus 17% buyer's premium) at the Shropshire auctioneers Mullock's in Ludlow.

MOST Star Wars aficionados are familiar with the story of the Flintshire pensioner who bought 20 Palitoy action figures for 49p each in 1978 and sold them at Stockton-on-Tees toy specialists Vectis for a small fortune in 2003.

CANTERBURY Auction Galleries are to embark on a new sales format that will double the number of fine sales held annually and offer every lot to a potential worldwide audience of Internet bidders.

CONTRIBUTING handsomely to the largest grossing sale ever conducted by a regional auctioneer, this 7in (18cm) high Chinese Imperial white jade bell sold for £2m hammer at Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury on May 19 – the first day of a two-catalogue Asian art sale.

A SPECIAL addition to Christie’s mid-season Old Masters and 19th century art sale in New York on June 9 is what the auctioneers describe as “an exceptional selection of European paintings and sculpture” from the former Salander-O’Reilly Galleries in Manhattan.

CONSIDERED the finest work by the Italian Baroque master Domenico Zampieri, Il Domenichino (1581-1641), in private hands, this painting of St John the Evangelist has been saved for the nation. It has gone on display in the National Gallery's Baroque rooms.

SWISS-based animal philanthropist Jeanne Marchig is suing Christie's over the female portrait sold as '19th century German' at Christie's New York in 1998 for $19,500 but now called La Bella Principessa and claimed as a £100m work by Leonardo da Vinci.

• Stoker's great granddaughter puts unique cache up for sale • Collection includes, letters, photos and even table waresA remarkable collection of documents and artefacts relating to the ill-fated British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-13 will be sold by Bamfords of Derby on May 26. The cache of largely unseen material has been entered for sale by the great granddaughter of Edward Archibald McKenzie, a crewman on the expedition supply ship Terra Nova.