Bonhams

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

A complete suit of well-matched period armour is rare indeed, so there was no doubting the star of Bonhams’ (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale in London.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

The traditional Christmas Old Master series in London provided the first test of the market since the spectacular sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in New York three weeks before.

Top-quality timekeepers of accessible size by major makers are the main strength of the 19th century clock market.

Two letters sent by passengers who lost their lives when the Titanic sank in 1912 came to auction in the latter part of 2017: one of them posted before she sailed, the other recovered, along with the owner’s pocket book, when his body was pulled from the freezing Atlantic waters.

Overall, a Voices of the 20th Century sale held by Bonhams New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on December 6 was rather disappointing, with only 100 of 264 lots sold (and only six of the 55 Russian lots). However, among the more curious entries was the ‘Paradummy’ pictured below.

A fascinating archive of manuscripts, ephemera and artefacts relating to the life and career of the great actor, playwright and theatrical manager David Garrick sold for a far higher than predicted £90,000 at Bonhams (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on November 15.

An extraordinary family archive of engineering and architectural drawings and designs for the projects of Marc Isambard Brunel (1769-1849), offered in 14 lots, sold for a total of £224,500 in a Bonhams (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of November 15.

A full saleroom and a sell-out are not necessarily features you associate with traditional fields such as English drinking glasses but there are always exceptions.

Modern British art by blue-chip names drove demand during the week-long series of November sales in London.

A December 7 sale of European ceramics at Bonhams will incorporate 130 pieces of Neapolitan porcelain from a single private source.

"If it hadn't been for the Blue Boxes, there would have been no Apple. I'm 100% sure of that." So said Steve Jobs of the electronic devices that simulate operators by generating the tones used by a telephone operator’s dialling console, and were typically used from the 1950s by so-called ‘phone phreakers’ to avail themselves of free calls.