Auctions

Sotheby’s have announced that they are to offer a flawless 59.6-carat pink diamond for sale in Geneva on November 13 with a record asking price of $60m.

Among the highlights of the New York Asia Week series of sales at Doyle New York was this Qianlong white jade phoenix ewer.

Cheshire auctioneers Adam Partridge have discovered a copy of the Passover Haggadah written and illuminated by the celebrated 18th century scribe Aaron Wolf Herlingen in Vienna.

A house clearance in Staffordshire yielded this highly decorative pair of late 18th or early 19th century narwhal tusk and gilt-metal lanterns for Louis Taylor’s latest sale in Stoke-on-Trent.

One of the most interesting things about auctions is how unusual objects from one side of the world come to be sold on the other, often with no apparent link.

The London Borough of Croydon has chosen Christie’s as the auctioneers for its controversial sale of 24 Chinese works of art from its collection.

As so often happens, a spectacular price for a very rare object will bring another out of the woodwork.

Three pieces of Victorian art from the Leverhulme collection will be offered at Sotheby’s in London later this year with a combined estimate of £9m-14m.

More than 2000 objects from a Dorset toy museum will come under the hammer in November.

The University of London is reported to have cancelled plans to auction off a rare set of four early Shakespeare folios to raise funds for further acquisitions.

An autographed letter signed from Charlotte Brontë doubled its estimate to make £24,000 at Lyon & Turnbull’s September 4 rare books, maps and manuscripts sale in Edinburgh.

With the Royal Academy opening a major show of Australian art in London on September 21, Christie’s will hope the added attention on this sector will yield benefit at their specialist sale being held in the Capital the week after.

A remarkable archive of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s personal property makes its second visit to the auction room in less than a decade this month when it is offered by Heritage Auctions in New York.

A number of oil paintings by Sir Kyffin Williams (1918-2006) gave a major fillip to Rogers Jones’ first sale in their new Cardiff saleroom. The results included the highest price ever seen for one of his works sold at auction.

This Scottish provincial George II communion cup topped Lyon & Turnbull’s latest silver sale in Edinburgh.

Demonstrating the benefits that provincial auctioneers continue to derive from the growth in demand for Modern British art, a number of this summer’s sale highlights in the regions were supplied by 20th century pictures.

The Balance of Competences Review, as it is called, aims to provide an analysis of what the UK’s membership of the EU means for the UK national interest.

Cheshire saleroom Frank Marshall of Knutsford set a new house record when this massive 17th or 18th century Sino-Tibetan gilt bronze statue of Guanyin sold for £126,000.

The battleground is Tibet. Invading troops massacre poorly armed peasant soldiers standing bravely in their way, doomed to defeat against a much more powerful, modern opponent.

A printed broadside from 1791 that gained visitors admission to Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, the home of Whig politician Horace Walpole, came up at auction this month and sold at £2000.