News

US: THIS 10in (25.5cm) high painted wood figure of an Egyptian offering bearer was described as Middle Kingdom, Dynasty XII in an antiquities sale held by Sloans in their Washington DC rooms on May 9.

UK: A COLLECTION of carte-de-visite photographs and signatures of leading figures of the Confederacy – the South’s leader, Jefferson Davis, and military leaders, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, among them – assembled by a Captain Busby of the Calypso, an English blockade runner, was one of more competitively contested lots in this Sussex sale. The collection was finally knocked down at £3000 to Julian Browning.

US: ROBERT Eldred’s March 30-31 sale of Americana in East Dennis (Massachusetts) included what they first saw as a 2ft 11in (89cm) wide “mahogany Sheraton-style one-drawer console table”, consigned from a local, Cape Cod estate and valued at $250-350.

UK: IT HAS just been announced exclusively to the Antiques Trade Gazette that the Heberden Coin Room at the Ashmolean Museum, which holds one of the most comprehensive collections of coins and medals in the world, has received a very substantial grant to update and rewrite the history of Greek coins from their invention (c.630BC) to Alexander the Great (d.323BC).

UK: THE quarterly London Coin Fair, affectionately known just as the ‘Cumberland’ on account of its venue, that was held last Saturday (June 23) was the last to be held at the Marble Arch Cumberland Hotel, it has just been announced.

FRANCE: CAVALIER arabe traversant un gue, by Eugene Delacroix, sold for F16.5m (£1.54m) plus 10 per cent buyer’s premium at Gros and Delettrez in collaboration with eauctionroom in Paris on June 18.

UK: TEA caddies and Tunbridgeware are both hot sellers at present and the combination in the form of this pretty piece, right, was irresistible to half a dozen bidders at the two-day sale held by Rendells (10 per cent buyer’s premium) at Ashburton on May 24 and 25.