Auctions

Triple lens or Triunial magic lanterns were the iPhone 8 of their day. Since the days of the Sturm lantern in the 17th century, the technology had developed from basic projectors producing small, dimly lit images, to these magnificent machines capable of spectacular technicolour lantern entertainments.

A US judge has ordered Christie’s to identify the winning bidder of the $12.5m (£9.7m) Guennol Stargazer, an ancient Anatolian idol auctioned in New York in April.

As weapons of war, swords have an impressively long history, as demonstrated by recent auctions around the world. From two £11,000 Viking swords at Bonhams in London to General Patton’s 1945 presentation sabre at Hermann Historica (€54,000/£47,370), there were centuries of warfaring history on view, including blades from Japan, Korea and Greece.

Two American presentation swords, marking high points in two very different military careers, made their mark in recent sales.

Cased pairs of pistols remain a particular favourite with collectors, being relatively compact and often in excellent condition after centuries cocooned in their brass-bound mahogany boxes.

More than 400 copper, tin and ceramic moulds, collected by the late antiques dealer Andrew Cottrell, were dispersed by timed auction at Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium) in Winchester on July 12.

Sporting guns are a little different from other areas of the arms and armour market in that many that are well over 100 years old are still in use today.

After a 23-year career at Christie’s, where he was a director and international specialist in Asian art, Jeremy Morgan has joined Woolley & Wallis.

Thomas Del Mar (24% buyer’s premium) sold the first instalment of de-accessioned arms and armour from the John Woodman Higgins Museum in Massachusetts back in 2013 and a second in 2014.

The art market is “neither frothy nor depressed”, according to Sotheby’s chief executive Tad Smith.

The summer season brought a raft of modern art sales to continental Europe and the various salerooms around Germany were no exception.

“With the exception of Dürer’s Apocalypse, the most influential woodcut programme from Germany was that of the Cologne Bible of 1478-79.”

Tim Goodman, former chairman of Sotheby’s Australia, is to relaunch his online auction house Fine Art Bourse (FAB) this month.

The unexpected highlight of a recent sale at Beurret & Bailly (20% buyer’s premium) in Basel was a work by the Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931) which had been considered lost for over a century.