Auctioneers

Arts & Crafts enthusiasts who hoped to buy a pair of Voysey chairs at something close to their £20-40 estimate at an auction in the Cotswolds were to be disappointed.

A spectacular competition came at Woolley & Wallis’ latest picture sale as 12 bidders pursued a pair of Italian Old Masters which the auction house had spotted tucked away in a dark corner of the vendor’s top landing.

As the Standard Catalogue of British Coins points out, this tiny denomination, the George VI silver threepence dated 1945 , essentially marks the end of the silver coinage and the beginning of modern coins made of copper-nickel and brass.

Shown below is a plate from A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most Notorious Pyrates… sold at Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium) on February 19

First auction to be held in Freeman’s new Philadelphia site topped by Degas and Van Gogh

An historic archive belonging to the engineer who oversaw the design of the Mulberry Harbours in the Second World War comes to auction in Cumbria later this month.

This set of table and chairs by the ever-popular Mouseman had been bought from the Kilburn workshops in the 1970s by the vendor’s parents.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales including an Edith Lawrence linocut.

Said to date from the 12th-14th century, an incomplete and dampstained Middle Eastern medical manuscript sold for £70,000 at Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium) on February 22.

Battered and dust-engrained when found in a basement during a Lake District house clearance, an early unsigned brass lantern clock generated great excitement at Penrith Farmers’ & Kidd’s (18% buyer’s premium).

Overseas interest fuelled bidding for two of the foreign offerings at Bellmans’ (22% buyer’s premium) Interiors sale in Winchester on February 12.

Frankly catalogued as in need of restoration and ‘sold as seen’, a late-17th century walnut and marquetry chest had the inherent quality to attract phone and internet bidders from across the UK to the Carlisle rooms of Thomson Roddick (17.5% buyer’s premium).

List of deaths is timely reminder that outbreaks are nothing new

Very much the surprise of an online sale held by Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) was a lot presenting incomplete fragments of 'An Almanacke and Prognosticatyon'… for the year 1552.

An unexpected star turn of a recent Norfolk sale was a job lot of works from the library of the late Ron Fiske of Morningthorpe Manor, an East Anglian collector whose books a Norfolk auction house first started dispersing a few years years ago.

This portrait study is by Sybil Atteck (1911-75), a pioneering artist in Trinidad and Tobago of Chinese descent known for her work in watercolour.

The big result in Doyle's (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) latest Old Master Paintings and Drawings sale in New York was the portrait of Pauline Bonaparte Napoleon’s sister by Marie-Victoire Lemoine pictured in ATG No 2429 that sold for $310,000 (£238,700), an auction high for the artist.

The near dominance of Scandinavians among mid-20th century designers of wood furniture and artefacts was underlined at two sales at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) in February.

Textbook watercolour by the British artist takes one of his higher prices in recent years.