Auctions

UK: THE table was hotly contested by top London dealers at Ewbank’s rooms in Send, Surrey on December 9, 1999, with Fulham Road dealer Michael Lipitch emerging as the top bidder at £58,000.

UK: THE exceptional levels of demand recently seen for American pictures impacted on the London salerooms on the evening of December 14 when Bonhams achieved a record £1.4m for Richmond Hill in the Summer of 1862 by the Hudson River School painter Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900).

FRANCE: THIS anonymous oil-on-paper portrait by Annibale or Agostino Carracci sold 'for around £60,000' at Virginie Pitchal’s Mirror of the Soul exhibition at her Left Bank gallery.

EU: THE FATE of the UK’s flourishing Contemporary and Modern art trade hung in the balance last week after the Government had continued its steadfast opposition to the introduction of droit de suite by frustrating an attempt to push through the directive at the Internal Market Council meeting.

UK: THE Professional Football Association was the successful bidder for L.S. Lowry’s crowd scene Going to the Match at Sotheby’s London last Wednesday, setting the record for the highest auction price for a Modern British painting at £1.75m

US: AT Christie’s East in New York on November 27, in a sale which reinforced 20th century design as a major market mover, this moulded plywood sculpture by Ray and Charles Eames, dated 1943 and 3ft 11/2in (95cm) high, established a world record price of $330,000 (£206,250) for the designers, selling to a specialist Eames collector.

UK: International bidders tuned into proceedings at Canterbury Auction Galleries on October 2, 1999 in the prospect of acquiring one of the earliest ship-to-shore receivers, illustrated right, manufactured in 1908 by the founding father of commercial radio communication – Guglielmo Marconi.

UK: PARIS salons were well known for flatulence in conversation. After each manned flight of giant balloons from the gardens of Versailles during the late 18th and 19th centuries, young men who wished to sound like scientists would earnestly debate whether hydrogen gas or hot air allowed the better flight.

UK: THE chance purchase of a book from a fellow exhibitor at Olympia has led to an exciting and profitable discovery for 20th Century at Olympia dealer Peter Edwards of Edwards Barany.

UK: AN international mix of private collectors, dealers and institutions turned out to bid for an old and celebrated collection of European glass formed by the late Dr. Otto Dettmers of Bremen when it went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London last week on November 23.

UK: PHOTOGRAPHIC proof of provenance lends enormous wings to the object concerned, and lot 1 at Phillips’ (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) sale of English and Continental furniture in London on October 12 was just such a case.

UK: IT MAY have been a mahogany wine cooler, but did its massive proportions and one-time residence in St Alban’s Cathedral suggest that it had formerly been used as a christening bath for babies rather than for beverages?

UK: EXAMPLES of the laminated-birch long chair designed by Marcel Breuer for the Isokon Furniture Company in 1936 have become a fairly common sight at London sales of modern design icons but are perhaps less familiar in the provinces.

UK: THE LINK between the woven silk portrait illustrated right and the modern world of computing may not be instantly apparent, but this 6in x 4in (16 x 11cm) silk panel, albeit a curiosity rather than a key scientific document, had a successful part to play in the Weinreb Computer Collection, which was sold by Bloomsbury Book Auctions in London on October 28.

US: THE MARKET for Impressionist and Modern art saw further consolidation last week when Sotheby’s and Christie’s turned over a premium inclusive $466m (£289.5m) for their November sales of works by the world’s most expensive artists.

UK: TWO from a set of five Chippendale mahogany dining chairs sold for £120,000 (plus 15 per cent premium) as part of the sale of objects from Hever Castle, Kent conducted ‘on the premises’ by Weller King on November 9.

UK: DELAYED news from tools specialist auctioneers David Stanley Auctions (buyer’s premium 10 per cent) focuses on this rare coach builder’s plough or grooving plane, right, constructed in ebony, brass and steel and probably made by Thomas Falconer around c.1840.

UK: THE unknown British soldier who embroidered the crude depiction of his lonely blockhouse on the South African veld almost a century ago, could hardly have expected his work to end up on the hallowed walls of the National Army Museum in Chelsea, having provoked intense competition from international bidders at Bosley’s auction of militaria in Marlow on October 12.

UK: A heart-shaped London delft pill slab of c.1660-70, 12 x 10in (30 x 25cm), painted in blue, ochre and turquoise with the arms of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.

UK: THERE remains some serious money available for the rarest of the Royal Doulton HN series figures as was seen at this Lincolnshire sale when one of the first of the Harry Nixon series was offered.