Bamfords

• 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.

Pictured right is a Yongzheng period (1723-1735) egg-yolk yellow ground ‘cranes’ bowl that was offered on the second day of a three-day sale conducted by Bamfords in Derby from September 13-15.

THE focus of the furniture trade’s attention in Bamfords' (15% buyer's premium) 1025-lot Derbyshire outing on September 8 was a c.1835 mahogany, triple-pedestal dining table with a top formed from two D-sections and a central Pembroke drop leaf.

WITH a name like the Old Picture Palace, the former cinema in Matlock that is the newly acquired saleroom of the Derby auctioneers Bamfords (15% buyer’s premium) should be the sort of venue where the more traditional end of the art market should feel at home.

Although a £12,000 oil by Arthur Spooner (1873-1962) was the most expensive entry in the sale at Derby held by Bamfords (15% buyer’s premium) on December 9-10, perhaps the most eye-catching lot was this Lenci dish, right.

On an April morning of this year, Guy Davis, book consultant to Bamfords of Derby, gave an interview on BBC Radio Derby in which he talked about a copy of the first Rupert annual of 1936 that was to be sold at auction later that same day.

MID APRIL saw only the second sale held by Bamfords, the Derbyshire auctions firm (15% buyer's premium), but elated auctioneer James Lewis, talking from his mobile whilst filming a new episode of BBC TV’s Flog It!, felt it to be the best he had seen in Derby in at least five years.

RUPERT Toovey launches his huge new saleroom in Sussex in a week, Dreweatt Neate have just completed a major revamp of their Donnington Priory rooms near Newbury and a host of other salerooms around the country have announced new facilities, upgrades and launches. Here we detail some of these changes, which indicate that however concerned many may be about the state of the UK antiques business, there is confidence out there and the determination to prosper through improved service.