Auctioneers

“WE will make a name for ourselves and Australia tomorrow.” This was how Captain Shout fired up his band of troops the night before the assault at Gallipoli in the First World War.

BONHAMS are to roll out a programme of upgrades and improvements across their network of UK provincial salerooms – including plans to move some into new, purpose-built auction centres.

A new auction company is set to start trading in Hampstead, North London this autumn.

More than two decades since the first sale of golfing memorabilia, this once-booming niche market stands at an important crossroads.

Underscoring a strength of demand for rhinoceros horn pieces seen in the recent specialist Asian sales, Chiswick Auctions achieved a house record on July 18 when this rhinoceros horn libation cup carved with carp feeding on a waterlily sold to a Taiwanese dealer at £46,000 (plus 15 per cent buyer’s premium). The 18th or possibly 17th century vessel was discovered by auctioneer William Rouse on the sideboard of a modest home in Hanwell, one of West London’s less fashionable suburbs.

After almost 150 years as chattels auctioneers, Bruton Knowles have sold their art and antiques division to former department head Simon Chorley.

The power of one major collection to transform an auction company’s figures was dramatically shown this month when Christie’s France announced sales figures of €122.8m (including premiums) for the first half of 2006.

Four Beatrix Potter watercolour Christmas cards, recently discovered in a Wiltshire attic, will be sold by Highworth, Swindon auctioneers Kidson-Trigg on September 20. The cards have been consigned by descendants of the original recipients, Elizabeth (1888-1977) and Elinor (1886-1979) Lupton.

DORSET auctioneers Cottees are under new ownership and have bucked the trend of rising charges in the saleroom by cutting both their buyer’s premium and vendor’s charges.

FRIENDS, relatives and colleagues have been shocked by the death of Richard Allen, former Director of Halls fine art auctioneers of Shropshire, in a road accident last Thursday. The tragedy occurred as Mr Allen was returning from a viewing.

The fourth annual ATG-sponsored football match between the Dealers and the Auctioneers will take place at the Bank of England sports ground in Roehampton on Friday, September 1.

Enigmatic, elusive, rarely seen, and classified as mad – but that’s our Dadd!

Christie’s took a major step into the world of virtual auctioneering last week with the launch of Christie’sLIVE, a real-time online bidding facility which they are to roll out over the next six months.

IT set a British auction record for a Shakespeare First Folio and made the highest price ever seen for a printed book at Sotheby’s London (20/12% buyer’s premium) – but hushed voices at the back of the saleroom were suggesting that the £2.5m hammer price represented pretty good value for a near-perfect copy of the most important book in English literature.

OF the many publications generated by Captain Cook’s exploits in the Pacific, the most curious is surely A Catalogue of the Different Specimens of Cloth Collected in the Three Voyages of Captain Cook to the Southern Hemisphere...

M1, one of the most sought-after UK registration numbers, set a new world record price for a car number plate when it sold for £300,000 at Bonhams’ Goodwood Festival of Speed sale of Sports, Competition and Collectors’ Motor Cars and Automobilia on July 7.

An early 19th century boxwood and bone Napoleonic prisoner-of-war model of the Third Rate 74-gun HMS Mars fired a shot across the bows at Hampton & Littlewood's (15% buyer's premium) Maritime Sale in Exeter on June 21 when it set a new house record of £60,000.

IN what must be one of the least surprising private treaty sales negotiated, The Martin Luther King Jr Collection will go to Morehouse College, Dr King's alma mater in his home city of Atlanta.

There was nothing dull or predictable about the coin sale at Spink on June 29 when an expectant crowd gathered to witness the sale of one of the rarest of English Medieval coins: the gold Double Leopard florin of Edward III which was minted for only a few months in 1344.

A COURT ruling means new Venice auction house San Marco can proceed with their July 8-9 sale - but only under strict conditions.