US

“We were somewhere around Barstow when the drugs began to take hold” are the opening words of Hunter S Thompson’s notorious and loosely autobiographical novel Fear and Loathing Las Vegas…

Best round scores in the most recent PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) golfing sale came with the appearance of a group of the papers of golfing historian and collector CB Clapcott.

Compiled by J Wells Kelly and published in San Francisco in 1862, a rare copy of the First Directory of Nevada Territory…, which was worn, dry and splitting but in original, leather-backed printed boards, sold for $6500 (£5080) in a PBA Galleries sale of April 20.

A £100 Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund sword, one of 23 awarded to captains who fought at Trafalgar, sold for $235,000 (£173,000), plus 15% buyer’s premium, to one of six phone bidders competing at James D Julia in Fairfield, Maine, on April 11.

Ancient art dealer Barakat Gallery has opened an extra US location in West Hollywood to the international galleries run by Fayez Barakat.

This flock of five sheep, Nouveaux Moutons, by the popular French designer François-Xavier Lalanne, will feature in Palm Beach Modern Auction’s two-session sale of around 500 lots on May 6 in Palm Beach.

The second TEFAF New York event opens this week, running from May 4-8 at the Park Avenue Armory. It is the second event that TEFAF has staged in the Big Apple in the past 12 months, the first of which was its inaugural ‘Fall’ edition last October. Whereas that event focused on art from antiquity to 1920, this edition features modern and contemporary art and design.

A major attraction in a PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) sale of April 6 was the Samuel Hessel ‘DNA’ collection of scientific papers, journals and books.

Pictured here is one of several etchings by James Abbott McNeil Whistler that will feature in Swann Galleries’ sale of prints on May 2.

This 8¾in (23cm) diameter Liverpool delft charger, dated 1738, is initialled MML for Michael and Mary Lightfoot, members of a Quaker family who lived in Chester County.

An Ushak Star carpet fragment measuring 5ft 2in x 6ft 1in (1.57 x 1.85m) will feature in Jeffrey S Evans’ April 29 sale of antiques, decorative arts and 20th century design in Mount Crawford.

A coalition of California auction houses fighting to reword a new law governing the sale of autographed collectables has cleared its first legal hurdle.

Christie’s is to open a new Los Angeles premises this month in Beverly Hills to bolster its presence on the west coast of the US.

This Tiffany gold necklace and earclip suite composed of textured rose petal links by Angela Cummings (c.1944) sold for £10,200 at Bonhams Knightsbridge (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on March 15.

Much like René Lalique, Louis Comfort Tiffany’s successful career as a glassmaker overshadowed his genius as a goldsmith. Both men created jewellery that have come to define Art Nouveau in France and North America.

A 600-lot sale devoted to Asian art held by Tremont auctions in Newton, Massachusetts, on April 23 will include a 4ft (1.2m) high vase made in the late 19th century.