Bamfords

James Lewis, founder and director of Bamfords auctioneers in Derbyshire, will attempt to set a new Guinness World Record for the longest continuous auction taken by a single auctioneer, in aid of wildlife charities.

A previously undocumented archive of writings by Edward Carpenter, the well-connected socialist poet and gay rights pioneer, sold for a hammer price of £4200, more than eight times its upper estimate, at Bamfords in Derby this month.

Focus on five militaria items ranging from a ship's bell marking a pioneering aircraft launch to a grasshopper brooch left as a memento for loved ones.

An early painting by UK-born Australian artist Thomas William Roberts (1856-1931), was authenticated on the BBC’s ‘Fake or Fortune?’ after being lost for more than 130 years.

Derbyshire-based Bamfords Auctioneers & Valuers has announced it will no longer sell solid ivory objects.

A recent sale at Bamfords of Derby included two outstanding pieces of Chippendale period rococo furniture, both consigned by a local lady who had inherited them from her father.

• Stoker's great granddaughter puts unique cache up for sale • Collection includes, letters, photos and even table waresA remarkable collection of documents and artefacts relating to the ill-fated British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-13 will be sold by Bamfords of Derby on May 26. The cache of largely unseen material has been entered for sale by the great granddaughter of Edward Archibald McKenzie, a crewman on the expedition supply ship Terra Nova.

THIS previously unrecorded George II mahogany ‘sign post’ angle barometer was made by the gifted mechanician and scientist John Whitehurst (1713-1788) of Derby.

BACK in 1936, a Mr Harry Woods decided to refurbish his home, The Gate House in Brighouse, and commissioned a fellow Yorkshireman, working some 50 miles away, to provide interior panelling, window seats and doors, as well as various items of furniture.

It was catalogued as Bow c.1760 but this English porcelain coffee cup seen at Bamfords of Derby on July 25 was identified as belonging to a much rarer class of porcelain associated with Charles Gouyn and a short-lived London concern in St James’s.