Tennants

The name Marklin always suggested an O gauge loco and tender offered at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) would find a buyer against a £200-300 estimate but there was a considerably greater head of steam when international collectors looked closer.

Jeffrey Lassaline has joined Tennants as silver and objects of vertu specialist.

A 17th century oak panel marking the rebuilding of one of the best-known dwellings on the Chester Rows sold at auction last week for £4600.

A cache of military diving watches sold in Hampshire and a £125,000 Daytona spotlight the thriving market for vintage mechanical ‘tool’ watches.

On January 4, 1940, the London subsidiary of the Omega Watch Co received an urgent order from the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Company for 2000 watches intended for Royal Air Force crews. Delivery was to be made by March 10, 1940.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales at £1500 or under, including a watercolour by a designer better known for Arts & Crafts jewellery.

Tennants credited “fresh-to-market pictures with a strong provenance” as the driving force behind the notable results in its Modern and Contemporary Art sale.

The demand for 1960s Pulcini glass birds made by Alessandro Pianon (1931-64) for the Venetian company Vistosi has spiked in recent months.

Stand-out lot in a recent Irish sale was one of the 100 special copies of Ulysses printed on Dutch handmade paper by Van Gelder that James Joyce signed on publication in Paris in 1922.

‘Boxing Badgers’ is one of just two known occasions when the celebrated taxidermist Peter Spicer (1839-1935) ventured into the strange world of the anthropomorphic tableau.

A fan showcasing the opulence of 19th century European aristocracy will be auctioned at North Yorkshire saleroom Tennants on June 27.

Troubling subjects to today’s society as they may be, promotional materials for tobacco, alcohol, chocolates and petrol from the 19th and early 20th centuries remain a popular choice for collectors.