Auctions

This collection of late Qing dynasty Chinese hair ornaments fashioned as bats, flowers and foliage and set with kingfisher feathers, coral, jade and pearls is part of a group of 30 lots from the collection of Evelyn Williams Medows Norie (1862-1915) which is on offer at Bruun Rasmussen on November 29.

Autumn has been the setting for so many specialist sales round the regions that an all-disciplines, quality sale such as that held by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium) at Exeter on October 3 was almost a rarity.

What expert James Opie described as “the most intriguing collection I have ever come across” provided Rochester auction house C&T (18% buyer’s premium) with its biggest statement yet in the toy soldiers market.

British and Irish watercolours piqued the interest of bidders at Tennants’ (18.5% buyer’s premium) Country House sale in Leyburn on October 14.

The name on the frame was the name of the game at Charles Miller’s November 7 auction in west London where a “rather tired and dirty” sextant sold for £28,000.

Not many new faces at salerooms can include among their experience “a trained horse whisperer”.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

A botanical collection formed over several decades by DF Allen of Washington DC and sold on October 26 by Sotheby’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) was small in numbers but focused on the exceptional.

In business for 20-plus years, former Sotheby’s auctioneer Catherine Southon, founder of the eponymous auction house and antiques TV presenter, takes nothing for granted.

“I died in hell – they called it Passchendaele,” Siegfried Sassoon famously wrote of the First World War carnage which ended in November 1917.

A sale devoted to pieces by French designers and held in the French capital proved to be a winning formula for Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) latest auction in this category on October 31.

Cirencester auction house Moore Allen & Innocent will offer a cache of uncensored letters written by a prominent First World War officer.

A collection of market-fresh pictures with a distinctive Surrealist streak found favour with buyers at Charterhouse (21% buyer’s premium) in Dorset.

A newly discovered, hitherto unpublished painting by the French master Sebastien Bourdon is coming up for auction in Marseille at Maison R&C on November 16.

“No one can rival Thomas Cole for engraving in the 19th century,” said director Jamie South after this exhibition-quality carriage clock sold for £26,000 (plus 20% premium) at Gardiner Houlgate in Horsham, Bath, on October 25. It went to an American buyer towards the top end of the estimate.

Earlier works in an October 18 sale held by Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) included a scarce 1688 first of Randle Holme’s The Academy of Armory, or a Storehouse of Armory and Blazon, an heraldic work by the third member of a distinguished Chester family of heraldic painters and genealogists to bear that name. It made £1200.

A Nobel prize-winner’s gold medal awarded to a British scientist is to go under the hammer in Hollywood as part of Julien’s Auctions sale on November 17.

As auction houses expand their specialist sales programmes, separate departments can also develop if the volume of business is worth it. Not many have a dedicated single-owner department, however.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period November 2-8, 2017. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

A mid-19th century scrimshaw carved whalebone walking cane sold for a house record of £17,000 (plus 18% buyer’s premium) at East Bristol Auctions on November 9.