Auctions

This painting of a flower market in Paris (below) by the Australian artist Ethel Carrick-Fox (1872-1952) took top honours at The Cotswold Auction Company (20% buyer’s premium) in Cheltenham on November 14.

Modern designs are not yet booming in price and a mini-golden age remains something of a secret, but that could be about to change as the largest private collection of its kind goes on display in the US...

Harry Clarke worked for three years on his first major book illustration commission, an edition of the Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen commissioned by Harrap.

Wright Marshall (21% buyer’s premium) featured a still-life by John Pawle (1915-2010) in its sale on October 28 in Knutsford, Cheshire.

Sotheby’s posted a record for the artist CRW Nevinson on November 21 when an important Great War scene was knocked down at £1.55m (£1.87m including premium).

The sale of a comprehensive collection of Channel Islands silver in Guernsey provides a perfect opportunity to test the market temperature...

Two opposing views on the big questions facing the trade. This week, ATG asks whether auction houses should open on Saturdays to accommodate more private buyers...

The material connected with William Butler Yeats in the family home of his son, the late Senator Michael, has proved as controversial – and profitable – as the great man’s writing itself.

It is possible to have too much of a good thing in a narrow collecting market – a feature amplified when the leading player has left the field.

A week before Fonsie Mealy’s William Butler Yeats sale, the auctioneers’ neighbours, kith and rivals Mealy’s (20% buyer’s premium) had a couple of eyecatchers in its November 8 sale at Castlecomer.

A recent silver sale at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury included a cache of early spoons from the collection of David Constable. Each had been illustrated and discussed in his magnum opus, 'Silver Spoons of Britain', published in 2016.

Natural history works, together with books, prints, even pictures featuring aspects of hunting, were a key component of a Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of November 2 billed only as The Library of a European Gentleman.

Entered into the October 21 sale at Bishop & Miller (18% buyer’s premium) by a Suffolk vendor thinning out his collection, these carved boxwood nutcrackers, right, made an immediate impact on bidders at the Stowmarket rooms.

Originally published in parts in the years 1804-12, George Brookshaw’s Pomona Britannica contains 90 colour-printed and hand finished aquatint and stipple-engraved plates of fruits then cultivated in Britain (pineapple pictured below).

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period November 16-22, 2017. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

A Sino-Tibetan gilt-bronze of a serene Amitayus confounded modest expectations to sell for $690,000 (£518,000) at the Neal Auction Gallery in New Orleans.

Though probably better known for his bronze and chryselphantine Art Deco figures, Austrian sculptor Josef Lorenzl also worked for Viennese ceramics factories and, in particular, Goldscheider, for whom he designed the extremely popular Butterfly Girl.

The dual appeal of Maltese silver lies in both a sense of national pride and a very limited supply.

A December 7 sale of European ceramics at Bonhams will incorporate 130 pieces of Neapolitan porcelain from a single private source.

An extraordinary example of British avant-garde clothing made on the eve of the First World War will be offered at auction in Oxford next month.