Germany

Vases and other vessels employing the Primavera technique belong to the rarest types of glass produced in Murano.

While many people have a decided aversion to pigeons, this did not apply to the bidders at Kiefer (25% buyer’s premium) in Pforzheim, Germany.

There was plenty of interest at a sale held by Van Ham (27% buyer’s premium) in Cologne for a painting of a Medieval scene with jousting tournament.

Three Old Master paintings being sold by Van Ham on May 22 in Cologne have a direct connection to the collection of Augustus the Strong.

With only one key, the Diskret, which was offered at a recent sale at Auction Team Breker (21.8% buyer’s premium), did not conform to the conventional layout of a typewriter.

In 1869, under the terms of the will of John Davy, brother of the celebrated chemist Humphry Davy, the Davy Medal was established in his name.

The Romanian artist Arthur Segal spent much of his career in Germany among the avant garde.

Augustus the Strong, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, was known as a monumental collector.

Thuringian auction house enjoys more success with collection of local industrialist

Founded in 1751 at the behest of the Prussian king Frederick the Great, ‘The Royal Prussian Asiatic Company in Emden to Canton and China’ aimed to profit from the trade between Europe and China.

The Flemish designer Henry van de Velde excelled in many fields, working as a painter and architect, before he devoted himself to creating a multitude of designs, from cutlery to furniture, from wallpaper to porcelain.

Collectors with a keen eye for rarities saw to it that unusual pieces of Märklin offered by Antico Mondo (21.5% buyer’s premium) in Bornheim went for multiples of their estimates.

The Mickey and Minnie Mouse motorcycle made by Tippco, c.1932, is the most desirable of all the German tinplate clockwork toys from the immediate pre-war period.

Very little is known about the late-18th century London maker John Grantham other than that he made many watches for the Chinese market, one of which came up for sale at Cortrie (21% buyer’s premium) in Hamburg.

Prices for the 19th century Polish genre painter Simeon (Szymon) Buchbinder moved to a new level at a sale at Blank (22% buyer’s premium) in Bad Vilbel, near Frankfurt.

Although he produced numerous bronze figures for public monuments and decorative elements for religious building, the German sculptor Ewald Mataré (1887-1965) is best known for his numerous figures of cows in a multitude of styles from realistic to cubistic.

It has been some years since a good piece of Vizagapatam furniture turned up at a German auction, so it was quite an event when Bieberle (21.42% buyer’s premium) in Magdeburg offered a writing cabinet.

While two early Märklin carousels went round and round, the bids at Hohenstaufen (24.5% buyer’s premium) in Göppingen went up and up.

Stehende Frau (Standing Woman) by Georg Kolbe soared to a new record at Grisebach (32% buyer’s premium) in Berlin.