This Irish silver basket by John Hamilton, Dublin c1745, is one of a number of lots of Irish silver at Sotheby’s in New York next Wednesday.

Christie’s auction of postwar and contemporary art in London began with a bombshell: The event’s star lot, an abstract painting by Gerhard Richter, was withdrawn. That was just minutes after the world’s largest rough diamond failed to sell at Sotheby’s.

A painting by Amedeo Modigliani fetched $170.4m at an auction, setting a world record for the artist and achieving the second highest price ever garnered for a work of art at auction.