Collectables

Along with its Summer Fine Art sale, Tennants held a jewellery, watches and silver sale on July 17.

Eight phone bidders competed for this splendid ebony and pietra dura table casket offered at a recent auction at Claydon Auctioneers in Middle Claydon, Buckinghamshire.

A silver sale at Woolley & Wallis (25/12% buyer’s premium) this summer included a selection of 24 snuff boxes from the Lion collection – as published in 'British Silver Boxes 1640-1840, The Lion Collection' (2015).

A snuff box believed to have been gifted by Lord Nelson to his personal secretary during a dinner party attended by Emma Hamilton has been sold by Paul Fraser Collectables for £45,000.

Set of tools was designed specifically to take apart rather than create fine textiles

Smaller decorative pieces by Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson (1876-1955) continue to excel in the saleroom.

A tobacco pipe which opened the series and an opium one which ended it – interspersed by a cigar stub – met keen demand at Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium).

This silver salmon corkscrew, hallmarked Chester 1914, can be found in LAPADA’s dedicated pavilion at The Game Fair.

A combination cigarette case and lighter given to Elvis Presley by the king of Thailand sold for six times its top estimate.

Auction house Prunier in Louviers, Normandy, has a long tradition of holding sales of Haute Epoque or early works of art.

A recent sale at Gildings (20% buyer’s premium) of Market Harborough included a number of medals of historical interest.

Trying to set a water-speed record is one of sport’s most hazardous competitions – with a high fatality rate as a result.

Almost two decades after the first American cast-iron mechanical banks, John Harper and Company of the Albion Works in Willenhall, Staffordshire filed a patent for the Wimbledon bank on September 21, 1885.

Titanic specialist auction house Henry Aldridge & Son sells poignant items related to the rescue and recovery ships.

While Georgian spectacles are relatively common at auction, 17th century examples are a rarer beast.

John Gresham was a third-generation member of a wealthy Hull timber-importing family.

The choice element of a mixed lot offered in Chichester on April 16 was a Georgian walnut mitre plane stamped for Christopher Gabriel.