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A string instrument once in the possession of Albert Einstein has gone for £860,000 in a bidding event.

This Zunterer violin from 1894 is believed to have been the scientist's initial violin and was initially expected to achieve approximately £300,000 when it went up for auction at an auction house in Gloucestershire.

A philosophical text that the physicist gifted to a friend fetched for the amount of £2.2k.

All final bids will have a further 26.4 percent fee added on top, meaning the total cost for Einstein's violin will exceed one million pounds.

Auctioneers think that after the additional charges are added, the transaction may become the record for a string instrument not previously owned by a professional musician or created by the Stradivarius workshop – while the previous record achieved by an instrument that was likely played during the Titanic voyage.

One cycling saddle also owned by Einstein remained unsold at the auction and may be put up again.

All objects up for auction were passed to his close friend and academic Max von Laue in late 1932.

Shortly afterwards, Einstein fled to the United States to avoid the growth of antisemitism and Nazism in the country.

Max von Laue gifted them to a contact and admirer of Einstein, Hommrich 20 years later, and the seller was her descendant that has offered them for auction.

One more instrument previously belonging by the scientist, which was gifted to him upon his arrival in America during 1933, fetched at auction for $516.5k (£370k) in the United States during 2018.