UK

Derbyshire-based Hansons Auctioneers is opening a London saleroom, with plans to host fine art and antiques auctions once a month from February 2018.

A gold memorial ring made for one of Nelson’s ‘Band of Brothers’ – and containing a lock of the Admiral’s hair – sold for £20,000 (plus premium) at Duke’s of Dorchester on December 7.

It may be strange and surreal, but John Spencer-Churchill’s (1909-92) landscape panorama of the evacuation of Dunkirk is the only depiction of the event known to have been painted by an eyewitness.

‘Stage Coach Passengers passing Woburn Sands’ is one of 100 coloured engraved caricatures after Isaac Cruikshank that illustrate GM Woodward’s Eccentric Excursions or Literary and Pictorial Sketches in England and South Wales, interspersed with Curious Anecdotes of 1807.

It has been another bumper year of art and antiques fairs and markets announcements, news and views. Here is a selection of highlights.

For some it starts with a fireworks display. For others, a kiss at midnight. But for some London fair-goers, the New Year proper begins in the ballroom of the London Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square, with the annual Mayfair Antiques & Fine Art Fair.

IACF came up with some interesting leads this year and featured stories included Joe Mitchell, an event administrator for IACF who is an embroiderer, working for international costume designers.

2017 produced some eye-catching prices in the UK’s regional salerooms. Here are some stand-out lots...

Helen Sutcliffe runs the premises of Sutcliffe Galleries in Harrogate. The family-run business has been trading for more than six decades and specialises in paintings from the 18th century to the present day.

Dealer Vincent Page, the new owner of Antiques on High in Oxford, which was saved from closure earlier this year thanks to a tweet from ATG news reporter Laura Chesters regarding its sale, has been busy since his purchase in August.

A ‘rediscovered’ fifth copy of Martin Waldseemüller’s globe gores from c.1507 was withdrawn from sale last week after a group of academics and dealers in the US expressed doubts over its authenticity.

While English ceramics feature in most provincial sales, November provided four auctions where the market could be looked at overall.

An extraordinary example of British avant-garde clothing made on the eve of the First World War sold for £29,000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium) at Mallams Oxford on December 8.

A copy of the first published work of the Brontë sisters sold for a record sum at Sotheby’s (25/20/12/5% buyer’s premium) on November 7, just a few months after a new high had been set at another London auction.

More than 400 lots of railwayana, assembled from the 1950s onwards by a single collector, will be offered at Norfolk auction house TW Gaze on January 5.