Auctioneers

A 1957 Ferrari 355 S Scaglietti sold at the Artcurial Motorcars auction for €32.1m (£24.7m) with premium to an international collector after “a tense, 11-minute bidding battle”.

The Contemporary art market survived better than many had expected at the London auction series last week.

A previously unknown seventh edition of the Bay Psalm Book, published in Boston, 1693, with a provenance tied to Salem witch trial judge Jonathan Corwin and descendants of John Proctor, sold for $221,000 (£151,584) at a Swann sale in New York on February 4.

This 18½in (47cm) George II silver soup tureen by the goldsmith Paul de Lamerie featured in Doyle’s latest sale of furniture, works of art and Old Master paintings in New York.

In a week of varying results, the Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist Art sales at Christie's and Sotheby's London took £228.8m with premium in total (compared with £381.4m for the equivalent series last year).

Culture minister Ed Vaizey has placed a temporary export bar on a pair of 17th century Italian ebony, ormolu and hardstone inlaid cabinets in the hope that they can be saved for the nation.

Richard Gold, one of the best-known regional valuers and auctioneers, has left Lawrences of Crewkerne to join Duke’s of Dorchester.

A new auction high for a ski poster was established at Christie’s South Kensington’s annual Ski sale, held on January 21, when this 1934 colour lithograph advertising the attractions of the Swiss resort of Gstaad sold for £62,000 (plus premium).

Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s saw sales fall in 2015, a sign that the art market may be slowing.

Fake works purporting to be Damien Hirst studio paintings are circulating on the UK regional art and antiques market.

Sotheby’s recent sale of royal and aristocratic heirlooms, titled Of Royal and Noble Descent, included this maiolica istoriato charger.

Sotheby’s are following Christie’s by staging their flagship New York May auctions of Impressionist & Modern art and Contemporary art in a single week.

The centrepiece of Sotheby’s April auction series in Hong Kong will be the collection of around 100 lots of Chinese porcelain spanning the Tang to Qing dynasties that was formed by the British collector Roger Pilkington.

Information has come to light proving that a newly-discovered flag due to sell at auction in March was not that flown from HMS Leviathan at the Battle of Trafalgar. It has since been withdrawn from sale.

A museum in Switzerland has acquired this extraordinary monkey band automaton at an online-only auction conducted by East Bristol Auctions, in Hanham, Bristol.

The competition between auction houses to expand their private sales operations took a new twist with the announcement last week that Sotheby’s had bought art advisory firm Art Agency, Partners (AAP).

Leading auctioneers in Ireland and Scotland enjoyed a solid, if unspectacular, year of sales in 2015.

Despite some obvious condition issues – including the absence of a handle and a significant portion of the pedestal base – this late 18th century Italian white marble model of the Warwick Vase sold for £14,000 at Woolley & Wallis’ latest sale.