Bamfords

The lockdown may have reduced the number of UK auctions taking place but buyers have been looking more eagerly for opportunities at those events that have been staged.

This 8½in (21cm) Delft blue and white tulip vase below is typical in style and form of the De Metale Pot (The Metal Pot) factory.

Preview held in imposing stately home helps to boost interest ahead of first sale section.

The sale at flood-hit Bamfords (21% buyer’s premium) on October 30 included chattels from the estate of Lady Elizabeth Georgiana Alice Cavendish (1926-2018), daughter of the 10th Duke of Devonshire of nearby Chatsworth House.

Copies of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone impressed in several summer sales.

Bamfords’ James Lewis has set a new Guinness World Record for the 'Longest Auction by One Single Auctioneer'.

Following the fall of Louis-Philippe in the 1848 revolution, the French royal sculptor Henri Joseph Francois, Baron de Triqueti (1804-74) was obliged to cast his net further afield for new patrons.

Lovely bunch of blooms? A closer look reveals Irish Quaker’s conchological talent...

It was a British engineer, Robert Whitehead (1823-1905) – working in Austria at the instigation of the Austrian Navy – who developed the first self-propelled torpedo in the 1850s.

Just a month after the Second World War, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was in Paris working at the lithography workshop of Fernand Mourlot (1895-1988). It was the beginning of a collaboration that would last almost three decades and produce more than 400 different graphic images and editions.

Three modestly valued works in regional sales, including a watercolour by Punch illustrator Arthur George Watts (1883-1935).

Collecting traditional English ceramics is still a popular pursuit on both sides of the Atlantic – but one where purchases are always tailored to fit the purse strings of the core collecting audience.

Dr Who fans can start collecting early this year with a series of lots from the cult science-fiction show going under the hammer in January.

Employing a translation made in the 16th century by William Adlington, the 1924 Ashendene edition of The Golden Asse of Lucius Apuleius was printed in the press’ proprietary Subiaco type in an edition of just 124 copies, of which 16 were printed on vellum but only 13 offered for sale.

We asked two auctioneers about a universally thorny issue: whether it's good business to charge buyers for leaving items they've bought beyond the stipulated deadline for collection.