Auctions

While May’s series of UK Asian art auctions lacks the overall focus of the Asian Art in London initiative in the autumn or the pomp of other spring events in New York or Hong Kong, it remains a key moment in the calendar.

Two choice British documents emerged across two different sales at Amherst, New Hampshire firm RR Auction (25% buyer’s premium).

The group of Chinese ‘export’ silver offered by Gorringe’s (25% buyer’s premium) in Lewes on April 21 came by descent from Reginald Follett Codrington Hedgeland (1874-1967), an Oxford graduate from Exeter who joined the Chinese Maritime Customs Service in 1898.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper sales

Cardiff auction indicates latest demand trends influencing the market for leading Welsh painter Sir Kyffin Williams

While many people have a decided aversion to pigeons, this did not apply to the bidders at Kiefer (25% buyer’s premium) in Pforzheim, Germany.

Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, tells the remarkable story of an African born on a British slave ship who earned a place among the London elite.

An Irish Regency overmantel mirror in Egyptian Revival style by the Dublin artisan Joshua Kearney (1797-1849) hammered for $22,000 (£16,400) against a $6000-8000 guide at Andrew Jones Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) in Los Angeles.

An item of great interest for me was the small pocket knife that was recently sold together with its own story from the Titanic disaster* [see Previews, ATG No 2739].

In 1950, the Swiss artist, architect and designer Pierre Jeanneret (1896-1967) joined his cousin Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (who had assumed the pseudonym Le Corbusier) to create a new capital of Punjab.

A pair of Edwardian wine and water ewers by London silversmith Sydney Bellamy Harman, 1910, tied for the most-expensive lot at a recent Doyle (28% buyer’s premium) auction.

A rare vinyl and rubber Supersol monster toy seized top-lot status with its vivid blue-green vinyl claws at a recent sale at Landry Pop Auctions (22% buyer’s premium) in Lambertville, New Jersey.

ATG’s pick of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com, featuring both the highest prices over-estimate and the top prices paid online.

According to the lot notes, 11 wood veneers from Macassar ebony to burr maple were used in making the c.1903 Émile Gallé Épis de Blé sideboard.

Two years after a Wiltshire auction house set a record for Titanic memorabilia with ‘the watch recovered from the body of John Jacob Astor’ at £900,000, another timekeeper making precisely the same claim has sold in Chicago for $800,000 (£592,000).