Bonhams

ATG’s selection of 11 coins and medals lots that were among the highlights sold at UK auctions in 2018.

A sledge from the first expedition to the Antarctic led by Ernest Shackleton sold for £115,000 in Bonhams’ Travel and Exploration sale on February 6.

Group amassed over 20 years now going under the hammer at Bonhams is attracting worldwide interest from would-be bidders.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Jean Ghika, global director of jewellery at Bonhams, closed out 2018 on a positive note.

Among the best performers at the Olive collection of early British ceramics, metalwork, furniture and treen sold at Bonhams on January 31 was this large English delftware tankard.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Pistols remain one of the most popular of all categories among gun collectors and the winter sales in London proved a bumper season for handguns, from the earliest wheel-locks of the late 16th century to the semi-automatics which ushered in the modern age at the end of the 19th century.

The Thomas Del Mar (24% buyer’s premium) sale in London on December 5 included several excellent pairs of English pistols.

Bonhams has made a trio of hires as contemporary art and digital growth become a focus for the auction house following the purchase by private equity group Epiris in September.

'A Book of Songs and Poems from the Old Testament and the Apocrypha', the Ashendene Press book of 1904 shown below, has in the past made as much as £2000 at auction.

Painted as a birthday gift, a portrait of one of the more popular characters in the annals of American children’s literature, Eloise, sold for $80,000 (£62,675) at Bonhams New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on December 5.

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.

Golden Age Dutch art topped the bill at Bonhams in the December 5 sale via a fresh-to-market still-life attributed to the 17th century painter Pieter Claesz (1597-1660), which sold for over four times the estimate at £130,000.