Collectables

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.

Morphets (20% buyer’s premium) of Harrogate sold a Mouseman bureau for a tub-thumping £36,000 on April 15.

South London auction house Roseberys (25% buyer’s premium) was instructed to sell the collection of Herbert Kennard on March 26.

These gold-mounted hardstone buckles are among only a few surviving examples of jewellery by the Dresden master goldsmith Johann Christian Neuber (1736-1808).