Auctioneers

UK: CHRISTIE’S and Agnew’s have confirmed that they have successfully negotiated the sale of the Millais masterpiece Mariana in the Moated Grange to the nation in lieu of tax.

Decorative Furniture The five annual selected sales at Christie’s South Kensington (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) always offer a broad variety of furnishings and objects that includes a generous supply of more decorative pieces of various ages.

UK: A George III Chippendale style giltwood wall mirror with a swan neck and cartouche pediment, 7ft 10in high by 3ft 5in wide (2.39 x 1.04m) was consigned to Gorringes’ sale in Lewes on April 21 with expectations of £2500-3000 and sold to a telephone bidder at £22,000 plus 10 per cent premium.

UK: A ROUTINE dispersal at the Ladybank salerooms was led by a Georgian oak lowboy of typical composition which attracted £13504.

Furniture & Works of Art Usually Sotheby’s (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) offer a sale of English furniture at around the same time as Christie’s, but the Bond Street auctioneers’ next comparable event will not take place until June 4.

UK: DURING a routine house call to a mid-Victorian terrace in Grantham, auctioneer Colin Young unearthed half of a pair of Victorian comports which were destined to establish a house record for ceramics at the Grantham Auction Rooms.

UK: IN common with a number of other London auctioneers, Bonhams (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium), were reserving their best quality Old Master consignments for July, but their April 13 sale in Knightsbridge did at least include the decorative charms of this 3ft 21/2in by 2ft 43/4in (98 x 73cm) canvas, illustrated here, of a young woman tending a bouquet of flowers, signed by the Italian-based still life specialist Abraham Brueghel (1631-1697).

UK: CONSIGNED by a Stockport couple who had been keen skiers during the 1950s, this late 19th century Black Forest carved hall seat, left, proved the unexpected highlight of Bonham’s (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) sale of general antiques in Manchester on March 24.

Bearnes, Exeter, March 23 Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent UK: HIGHLIGHTS of this sale included Thomas Short’s Comparative History of the Increase and Decrease of Mankind in England... and also a Meteorological Discourse, 1767, which, in the process of assembling historical and medical information, advocates early marriage and denounces alcohol as ‘a Stygian poison’. It sold at £100.

UK: CHRISTIE’S chairman Lord Hindlip has declared himself more excited about the prospect of selling the £20m plus collection of Nathaniel and Albert von Rothschild on July 8 than about any other sale in his 36 years at the auction house.

G.E. Sworder & Sons, Stansted Mountfitchet, March 16 Buyer’s premium: 10 per cent UK: "CERAMICS and collectables are usually well received by the trade, but at this 1000-lot sale they were met with a muted response, silver and jewellery were eagerly sought after while the furniture met with a keen response from trade and private buyers,” said auctioneer Guy Schooling.

The flying logbook of Fred Shaw, an RCAF navigator, received quite a lot of media publicity when Sotheby’s Sussex announced its sale, because of a suggestion that it sheds light on the disappearance of bandleader Glenn Miller in December 1944.

Ewbank, Send, March 25 Buyer’s premium: 10 per cent UK: An amusing, illustrated letter sent by the 16-year-old Edward Coley Burne Jones to his aunt Amelia on May 7, 1849, topped this sale with a London bid of £880.

Blenheim St to Bond St UK: PHILLIPS’ London headquarters are to be transformed as part of a long-term strategic plan to take the company’s core business up-market.

UK: PROBABLY commissioned by General Charles Churchill – whose arms it bears – for his European campaigns after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, this William and Mary silver-gilt travelling set came up at Mellors & Kirk of Nottingham on March 25-26 where it sold privately at £48,000 (plus 10 per cent premium).

US: How do you titillate an ocelot? You oscillate its tit a lot. Kenny Everett’s immortal insight into the sexual life of one of the obscurer members of the cat family is usually quite difficult to drag into an auction report. But how can titillation be resisted when someone is prepared to pay $525,000 (£324,075) for this painting of an ocelot at Sotheby’s New York (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium).

US: ONE of 167 illustrations which make up Frans Masereel’s My Book of Hours, one of the woodcut novels pioneered by the Belgian political cartoonist in the early part of this century.

UK: THE highlight of the Natural History sale held by Christie’s on March 17 – a lot which had its own separate catalogue – was the Moller Florilegium.

UK: Maria Szantho (b. 1898-?) was a Hungarian artist who specialised in glamour girl nudes which crop up with some regularity in the salerooms, generally at prices between £500-3000.

UK: “PLACE the flattened end of the flagstaff in the socket made for it, then raise the hammer until it catches the base of the flag socket and remains upright: place a cap in the capholder and mount the soldiers along the trench.