News

This 18th century needlework panel appears to be a fragment of a work conceived on almost Bayeux Tapestry proportions.

Following the announcement in August of a newly-discovered 1938 fairground scene by Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976) scheduled to appear at Sotheby’s on December 13, it has emerged that the scene depicted is not, in fact, Beswick Fair, near Manchester, as had been mooted.

Following Christie’s decision to hold liquor sales in New York, Boston auctioneer Skinner is to launch a wine department.

Some of the heat may have left the Jack Vettriano (b.1951) market since his Singing Butler made £660,000 in April 2004, but Sotheby’s nevertheless posted the second highest price ever paid for the artist at auction when they sold Bluebird at Bonneville for £400,000 (plus premium) – the top lot of the firm’s annual sale at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire on the evening of August 29.

LONDON coins, medals and stamps specialists Spink have bought the American stamp auctioneers Shreves Philatelic Galleries.

November launch for ‘international’ event

Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted cast of a human skull has been bought by a group of anonymous investors, which apparently includes himself, for its asking price of £50m.