Auctioneers

In 1897 Charles Francis Annesley Voysey agreed a contract with Alexander Morton and Co to provide designs for a minimum of 10 textile designs each year for five years.

Sale that featured Constable and Drury big-hitters also included intriguing lots at lower price levels

The Autumn Auction at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood in Exeter on October 15-16 includes an array of unusual objects from the collection of the late Christopher Hawkings, who at one time was the co-owner of Phillips, Son & Neale in London’s Bond Street (the firm that later became Phillips).

A recent sale at Claydon Auctioneers (21.5% buyer’s premium) in Buckinghamshire included a suite of aluminium bedroom furniture by the HG Hawker Engineering Company.

Plucked from a box of bric-a-brac brought in for a general sale, a Commonwealth gilt brass sealing wax box sold for £5200 at Lawrences of Crewkerne. A clever pun gives a clue to its maker’s identity - and perhaps his political leanings.

The Swinton Estate, which spans approximately 20,000 acres of North Yorkshire, has been in the Cunliffe-Lister family since the 1880s.

Actress Jane Horrocks took to the rostrum at Ewbank’s in Surrey on September 19 for Diary of a Wardrobe - A Celebrity Charity Auction for Marie Curie.

A recent Vintage Posters sale at Swann Galleries (25/20/12% buyer’s premium), a summer staple of the New York auction house, was dominated by three large early 20th century magic posters, each hammering for $22,000 (£16,650).

Pulling out a suitcase from under a bed during a probate valuation, Dawsons’ valuer could scarcely have guessed what they would find hidden inside.

Large urban landscapes, lorry parks, shantytowns and thronging markets feature heavily in the work of Ghanian painter Ablade Glover (b.1934).

Of numismatic interest in the Swinton sale were two George VI silver seal matrices made for the County Palatine and the Duchy of Lancaster.

Aboriginal painter Namatjira’s evocative Australian work makes rare appearance in a British saleroom