US

A New York law banning the sale of antique ivory has been challenged in court by two leading US antiques dealers associations.

Sold for $300,000 (£214,185) apiece in a recent New York sale were three very well-known works from the worlds of cartography and natural history.

“They were as bold, diverse, and brave as René Lalique and his peers had been in the 1900s, bucking convention and tradition to change the landscape of British jewellery.”

A sale devoted to 700 lots of magic memorabilia is to be held by Potter & Potter Auctions in Chicago on April 28.

A restituted portrait of a German electoral prince by Lucas Cranach the Elder, missing for nearly 80 years, has sold for $6.6m (£4.7m).

Helen Larson was a keen collector of costume, especially pieces with historical associations. She spent half a century building up a collection that encompassed early costume, couture and pieces with historical or celebrity provenance, helped by her friend Doris Langley Moore who founded the Costume Museum in Bath.

Composed to mark the departure from these shores after two years of self-imposed exile in Ireland and England, a Farewell Song of Frederick Douglass, on Quitting England for America – the Land of his Birth was published in London in 1847.

Rather slimmer than he is seen in the later films that are perhaps his principal memorial, this ink self-portrait by the comedian, juggler and actor WC Fields dates from his earlier, vaudeville years.

Quinn’s Auction Galleries is selling a collection of around 1000 pieces of Wedgwood assembled by Adele Barnett, the founder and past president of Washington DC’s Wedgwood Society, and her husband Alan. The collection is to be offered in its Falls Church saleroom on April 14.

The central 350-lot section of the auction of clocks, watches and scientific instruments to be held by Skinner in Marlborough on April 20 comprises a single-owner collection of European tools.

Successful lots in a Bonhams New York (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) March 9 auction included, at $85,000 (£61,595), a letter that Einstein wrote to his son, Hans Albert, on the very day in September 1945 that the Second World War officially ended.

When the first wave of Kenner Star Wars action figures began arriving on the market in 1978, the Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker figures came with ‘double telescoping’ light sabres.