News

This dramatic theatrical costume for a warrior in yellow satin with gilt thread and silk embroidery took the top price in a sale of Asian Costume and Textiles held by Christie’s South Kensington on June 21.

For last November’s Asia series Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10 per cent buyer’s premium) switched from holding mammoth mixed Oriental offerings to more specialised separate Chinese and Japanese sales – an arrangement they continued for the summer Asian sales last month.

VANDALS are being blamed for a fire that threatened to engulf Eastbourne Auction Rooms last week.

The London art market breathed a general sigh of relief last week after Sotheby’s and Christie’s Part I Impressionist and Modern sales belied the atmosphere of economic uncertainty with a clutch of high prices for classic works by the major names of late 19th and early 20th century art.

UK: WRITTEN shortly after 1290, perhaps for a practising lawyer and presumably by professional scribes – it exhibits a variety of neat English cursive and charter hands – the manuscript copy of Magna Carta and the Statutes of England illustrated right is a remarkable example of an English medieval secular book.

US: TWO early American longcase clocks with much higher expectations failed to sell in a Freemans Americana sale of April 20, but the inlaid mahogany shelf clock pictured left doubled its estimate to sell for $23,000 (£16,430).

Dan Dare, pilot of the Future, makes his first appearance in the 1950 first issue of Eagle comic, alongside which is a 1953 Dan Dare Book of Jet Planes, with 3-D viewer. These were sold by Comic Book Postal Auctions, London, on June 12 for £248 & £130, respectively (+ 10 per cent buyer's premium).