International

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.

Henry VIII, King of England 1509-47 was not a happy man on July 14, 1539, it seems.

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.

Collector Robert A Ellison was obsessively acquisitive.

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.