Peter Francis

Buyers in Wales this week have a wealth of art and antiques to choose from including a 19th century traditional Welsh hat.

English wines are steadily gaining a reputation for decent quality, with sparkling styles in particular starting to challenge Champagne as an alternative patriotic option. Back in 1889, it was Welsh whisky throwing the gauntlet down to Scotland in the hope of supping long-running success.

Welsh auctioneers Peter Francis set a new house record when this 8in (19cm) celadon glazed vase sold via the-saleroom.com to a bidder from mainland China for £114,500.

Top price of the day at Peter Francis’ recent sale in Carmarthen was provided by this 4½in (11cm) Swansea creamware tea caddy made in the early years of the Cambrian Pottery.

This pair of full-size library globes was the pick of more than 800 lots from a Pembrokeshire country house sold by Carmarthen firm Peter Francis.

An illustration of the Polish composer Frederic Chopin by Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) was the star attraction at a recent auction in Wales.

Appearing in Carmarthen on July 24, this illustration of the Polish composer Frederic Chopin by author Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) was discovered during a routine house call by auctioneers Peter Francis.

This papal skull cap or zuchetto will feature in the fine art and antiques auction at Peter Francis of Carmarthen on May 29.

CHARLES Hampshire of Peter Francis auctioneers in Carmarthen has won the NAVA National Auctioneer of the Year Award.

SOUTH Wales auctioneers Peter Francis anticipate moving to their new Carmarthen saleroom in the spring.

An unidentified culprit used counterfeit cash to purchase an item in an auction of general antiques at Peter Francis Auctioneers of West Wales on July 15.

WITH a style, as one writer has put it, “sweetly intensified to a point where the world is reduced to a world of gossamer”, Annie French (1872-1965) was a Glasgow School artist who took the Art Nouveau idiom of Beardsley and Burne-Jones to new decorative extremes.

Setting a new house record at Carmarthen auctioneers Peter Francis on March 9 was this 18th century Coromandel Coast marquetry inlaid padouk, ebony and ivory chest of five short and two long drawers.

Understandably, the Russians left this one behind when they liberated the Reichstag in 1945, but a Tommy NCO with a sense of humour decided to rescue this beleaguered portrait of the First World War German Field Marshall and Weimar president Paul von Hindenburg, right, from the ruins and take him back to the West Country.

This simple 91/2in (24cm) diameter pottery 'souvenir' plate, made in Llanelly c.1910 and decorated with Welsh folk heroine Mari Jones in the manner of the factory's most famous painter, Samuel Shufflebotham, sold to a Pembrokeshire collector at £1700 (plus 15 per cent premium) at the Carmarthen rooms of Peter Francis on January 25.