Highly collectable musical items – including famous 19^th century French composer Claude Debussy’s extravagant ivory conductor’s baton – belonging to the late Professor Richard Divall AO OBE, founding music director of the Victoria State Opera, should bring auction goers in droves to E.J. Ainger’s forthcoming special sale from 11am Sunday April 30 at 433 Bridge Road, Richmond.

An important Madagascar rosewood and amaranth commode after the original Joseph Stockel piece which resides in the Musee National du Chateau de Fontainbleau is a major highlight of Christian McCann’s forthcoming auction from noon Sunday April 9 at 426 Burnley Street, Richmond.

Of German descent, Joseph Stöckel (1743-1802) was known to be in France as early as 1769.

He was made a master in 1775, set up his first shop in the rue de Chareton, and moved to the rue des Fosses-du-Temple after the French Revolution broke out.

Deutscher and Hackett will auction part III of the Laverty Collection from 7pm Wednesday April 5 at the Cell Block Theatre, National Art School, Forbes Street, Darlinghurst in Sydney.

Passionate art collectors for many years, Colin and Liz Laverty’s collecting lives were turned upside down in 1988 when they attended the World Expo in Brisbane.

It was there they were captivated by a large group of Aboriginal Papunya Tula paintings on display.

Back in Sydney, they set about gaining as much knowledge as possible about Aboriginal art through books and catalogues.

The development of mail being carried by aeroplane and the significance of how individual letters came to be selected for the purpose as a historical narrative is largely revealed in the second auction of well-known Canberra collector Tom Frommer’s extraordinarily diverse aerophilately collection. 

Mossgreen carried out the first auction in September last year and this time has divided the sale into three sections – international pioneer airmails, Australian aerophilately, and the airmails of Papua & New Guinea.