News

AUSTRALIAN auctioneers Cromwell’s are proving they are no square-heads by drumming up an army of loyal customers with a club for regular buyers.

SOTHEBY’S chief executive Bill Ruprecht is bullish about the company’s second quarter performance, reporting a 25 per cent increase in net income on the same period last year.

TOP LOT in this comparatively modest sale of Continental books and manuscripts at Sothebys on June 11, at £52,000 to a European dealer, was an autograph manuscript of one of Goethe’s more celebrated poems, Sehnsucht, (Longing) dated to c.1802-03.

FRANCE: Millon & Associés (17.5/ 13.5% buyer’s premium) June 26 sale included two watercolours taken from an album of drawings by Eugene Delacroix, which the artist presented to Count Charles de Mornay on their return from Morocco in 1832.

The Zurich firm Numismatica Ars Classica (NAC) are opening an office in London. Negotiations for a Crown lease on prestigious premises in Waterloo Place (SW1) are well under way although they have suffered a slight setback which I understand will be resolved in the very near future. An autumn opening is planned.

Frontline forgery: LETTERS home during WW2 were extremely important to soldiers on the front. Each soldier was issued a quota of stamps which were specially overprinted to validate their posting from a specific location.

FRANCE: THE Louis XVI pyramid clock, 2ft 1in (63cm) and confidently attributed to bronzier François Vion, soared to a double-estimate €200,000 (£129,000), despite the fact that the escapement and pendulum suspension had been replaced, at De Nicolaÿ (15/10% buyer’s premium) on June 26.