BUCKING the trend in a challenging marketplace for Victorian ceramics, two enthusiasts have launched a new business dealing in Staffordshire figures.

EN ROUTE to the recycling centre, the owner of this Victorian armchair called in at his local saleroom to ask if it might be worth saving from the skip. He was told by Andrew Smith of Itchen Stoke, near Winchester, that the chair, in store for some years, might bring £80-120. It was consigned for sale on February 7.

THE appeal of this 5 x 7in (13 x 17cm) watercolour lies not in its technical skill but in its subject matter and the name of the amateur artist: the explorer Sir George Back (1796-1878). Although it is neither dated nor inscribed, this hitherto unknown sketch shows Back’s ship, the converted bomb vessel HMS Terror, stranded in the pack ice of the ‘Frozen Strait’ during the long Arctic winter of September 1836 to July 1837. The expedition had intended to map the last sections of the uncharted coast of North America.

VICTORIAN plaster cast heads of British criminals were not simply macabre souvenirs. Most were created post-mortem as research for the pseudoscience of phrenology – the study of the size and shape of the brain and skull to determine personality.

WHEN it appeared for sale at Christie’s in Amsterdam in June 2015, the picture left was catalogued as ‘after Sir Anthony Van Dyck’.

Racehorse owner’s collection of tickets and passes is the finest at auction in living memory

Part of a 2000-year-old tradition, neoclassical cameo collection shines at Knightsbridge sale

Bonhams’ director Jean Ghika talks to Roland Arkell about a fundamental change in the jewellery market – and what 2017 might hold for buyers and sellers

THE highlight of Christie’s Old Master prints catalogue on January 25 – the first New York sale the auctioneer has held in this category for 15 years – was this monumental woodcut by Titian.

Troubled online auctioneer seeks new funding as investors circle around subsidiaries

Rare survivor from the Emerald Isle shines as it reappears after almost 50 years in Essex sale

A SPECTACULAR private treaty sale of an icon of ethnographic art helped Woolley & Wallis retain its status as the UK’s leading regional saleroom in 2016.

THIS week representatives of Adam Partridge, auctioneers and valuers in Macclesfield, visited the Turkish Embassy in London to oversee the return of a Bronze Age artefact from Anatolia.

Ever-changing fairs scene in the Sunshine State is now further affected by venue closure

THIS remarkable ‘English School’ satirical oil is recorded in contemporary prints titled Lucifer’s New Row-Barge, a version of which is in the British Museum. It depicts Robert Knight (1675-1744), the cashier of the South Sea Company who in 1719 successfully negotiated with the government of the day to incorporate all the national debt into the South Sea Company. Knight greatly profited personally from this process – and the many bribes to MPs and peers he recorded in a famous green book – and bought an estate in Essex for £20,000.