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Certainly the most expensive Coronelli globe ever sold, and quite possibly the costliest single globe of any kind at auction*, this 3ft 61/2in (1.08m) diameter terrestrial globe of 1688 was sold for £210,000 to a collector as part of a July 10 Cartography sale held by Christie’s.

English ceramics may have been the junior partner to their Continental cousins in lot terms at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on June 27, making up just 81 of the 230 lots, but they provided the two highest prices.

“Full of fire and and zealous faculty breaking its way through all conventionalism to such truth as it can conceive” – thus was the forthright opinion of John Ruskin on seeing George Tinworth’s collection of eight terracotta panels of biblical scenes at the 1875 Royal Academy Exhibition.

Specialist items, including a collection of five nut crackers and novelty silver entries, encouraged buyers to travel to Herefordshire to bid in this 1080-lot sale at Brightwells on 11 June, which was 70 per cent sold by lot.

Sales by members of the Paris Compagnie des Commissaires-Priseurs (i.e. all Paris auctioneers bar Christie’s and Sotheby’s) fell 15 per cent in the first half of 2002 to €290m (£187m), as compared to the first six months of 2001.

English blue and white pottery may not be the most fashionable ceramic collecting area, but the 144-lot Patricia Davis collection offered in the June 11 morning session at Sworders Essex rooms suffered only 22 casualties.

SINCE the 1920s, Shell have commissioned paintings from key British artists for Shell county guides, calendars and school wall charts. In order to raise funds to create a new exhibition space in the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu for the earlier works from the company’s collection, Shell decided to sell 193 lots dating from 1950-1990, most of which had never been seen in public before, at Sotheby’s Olympia (17.5% buyer’s premium) on July 4.