Auctions

It was in December 2014 that Sotheby’s put an estimate of £100,000-150,000 on what it called at the time “probably the most famous and evocative illustration of the 20th century”.

This ivory-inlaid fall-fronted cabinet is one of the highlights in a sale of Islamic and Indian art at Drouot by Ader on June 29.

MADAM – In response to letters on credit card fees and buyer’s premium at auction houses in ATG No 2345, I would argue the assumptions made are misplaced – certainly in the case of how our auction house works.

Hard-paste figures of Russian ethnic characters and workers have appeared at English auctions on a number of occasions in recent years (ATGs passim), generally to keen interest from the Motherland and eastern Europe.

A beautifully preserved 1937 first state copy of Tolkien’s 'The Hobbit' sold for £35,000 at Forum Auctions.

It is relatively rare to find items of 16th century costume on the market, especially pieces in good condition. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that this gentleman’s doublet from c.1580-1600 should end up going to a major museum when it went under the hammer in a Paris auction this month.

The Wassenaar Zoo in Den Haag opened its doors in 1937 and closed in 1985, but its wonderful library, essentially untouched since the 1970s, has only now come to auction in London.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Ken Hose, who has published three books on Australian clockmakers, has been fascinated by clocks and their mechanics since he was a teenager.

Written in red ink on four sheets, the original draft script of Ronnie Barker’s famous ‘Fork Handles’ TV sketch of 1976 has been sold for £28,000.

The recent crackdown on Russian money in London seemed to have little noticeable effect on the latest Russian art sales in the capital.

A late 17th century ebony veneered table clock with a pull quarter repeat took a mid-estimate £17,500 at Chiswick Auctions on June 6.

John Magnier, the Irish horse breeder and art collector, reportedly made a five-fold return on his Amadeo Modigliani reclining nude when it sold at Sotheby’s New York last month for $139m (£102.2m).

Shown below is one of 20 hand-coloured plates from 'Masken des Römischen Carnevals'. This was a rare and separate 1790 Weimar issue of the plates that illustrated a work by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Roman carnivals published the previous year – an item that is itself a great rarity*.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Though their output was dwarfed by their male counterparts, talented 20th century Irish female artists pack a punch in the saleroom when their art does appear at auction.

Bid to a record €18,000 (£15,660) in a May 15-17 series of sales held by Reiss & Sohn (18% buyer’s pemium) of Königstein, near Frankfurt, was a first edition of Immanuel Kant’s 'Critik der reinen Vernunft'.

It was a four-page Mozart manuscript of an unfinished Allegro in G for piano and four hands that led the Sotheby’s (25/10/12.9% buyers’ premium) sales of May 22.

By 1677, the great English clockmaker Thomas Tompion (1639-1713) was subletting part of his famous London premises – The Dial and Three Crowns at Water Lane – to one Jasper Braem or Bream (fl.1677-96).