US

A pair of Edwardian wine and water ewers by London silversmith Sydney Bellamy Harman, 1910, tied for the most-expensive lot at a recent Doyle (28% buyer’s premium) auction.

A rare vinyl and rubber Supersol monster toy seized top-lot status with its vivid blue-green vinyl claws at a recent sale at Landry Pop Auctions (22% buyer’s premium) in Lambertville, New Jersey.

According to the lot notes, 11 wood veneers from Macassar ebony to burr maple were used in making the c.1903 Émile Gallé Épis de Blé sideboard.

Two years after a Wiltshire auction house set a record for Titanic memorabilia with ‘the watch recovered from the body of John Jacob Astor’ at £900,000, another timekeeper making precisely the same claim has sold in Chicago for $800,000 (£592,000).

Peter Harrington Rare Books presents a selection of British treasures fit to delight a US audience at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair.

An historic piece of Georgian silver – the ‘pair’ to the famed Walpole ‘seal salver’ in the Victoria & Albert Museum – is being offered for sale following its recent rediscovery in New York.

Collector Robert A Ellison was obsessively acquisitive.

The legend of author Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) is forever linked with sport fishing.

Two years after a Wiltshire auction house set a record for Titanic memorabilia with “the watch recovered from the body of John Jacob Astor”, another timekeeper making precisely the same claim is coming to market.

Magic books library reflects obsession of collector who prized exceptionally clean examples

An original Georg Dionysius Ehret illustration of a magnolia blossom hammered for $330,000 (£242,000) at Arader Galleries (20% buyer’s premium) on February 7 in New York.

A newly discovered prime period untitled work by Indian Modernist Akbar Padamsee (1928-2020) established a new house record for Roland Auctions in Glen Cove, New York, on March 28.

Generating plenty of competition at Bonhams Skinner (28% buyer’s premium) was this lot of three pieces of Elkington & Co silver plate.

Two 20th century posters in quite different genres set records at auction in early March.

Though leeches do remain in the pharmacopeia, they’re no longer stored in the ceramic jars and urns common to pharmacies of the 18th and 19th century.

The first mention of plans for a Wedgwood earthenware chess set occurs in a bill from a 30-year-old John Flaxman dated March 8, 1785.

If the period from the 19th to early 20th century was the ‘golden age’ for carriage clocks, it was equally a superb age for pocket watches