Auctions

A complete set of plans showing what was once the world’s largest industrial complex and the British state’s single biggest investment has sold in Cornwall. Thomas Milton’s plans of the Royal Dockyards sold to an online buyer for £10,000 (plus 18% buyer’s premium) at David Lay's latest sale in Penzance.

Brought into the Epping saleroom of the Bonington auction house with a collection of Moorcroft, this Florentine Mannerist bronze sold for £150,000.

Relatively few English spinets from the 17th century survive but one surfaced at a Criterion auction in Islington. Loosely catalogued and estimated at just £100-200, it made £5500 (plus premium).

Lots offered towards the start of sales at the same auction house prove successful.

An exceptional 11-lot group of the works of James Sowerby featured in a Swedish summer sale.

Clock produced by Englishman influential in French horology impresses in Norfolk auction.

Compiled for official British War Office use on the eve of the American War of Independence, this quarto volume bearing the manuscript title ‘The Uniform of the Several Regiments of Foot in His Majesty’s Service’ doubled the high estimate at Christie’s New York (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium).

In this group of predominantly Victorian ceramics beloware two 18th century pieces: a typical polychrome delft plate of modest value and a far more commercial early English toby jug.

'Versuche über Pflanzen Hybriden' by Gregor Mendel is a paper that marked the foundation of the science of genetics.

Although catalogued as ‘Continental’, this mid-19th century porcelain figure of a seated semi-nude ballet dancer below carries impressed marks for the factory established by the English entrepreneur Francis Gardner in the town of Verbilki near Moscow in 1766.

From the height of almost impractical luxury to a simple piece of homespun craftsmanship, the full creative range of sewing accessories was on offer at the summer sale of specialist auction house Bleasdales (20% buyer’s premium).

The interior of this 15in (38cm) mid-19th century Chinese gilt and black lacquer workbox includes two layers of 15 small interlocking boxes. The central cruciform-shaped box has a pin cushion incorporated in the lid.

Better by a distance than nine similar items, a mid-17th century wainscot chair offered by Lawrences (25% buyer’s premium) in Crewkerne demonstrated the yawning price gap between the acceptable and the desirable in the early oak market.

The reason that an otherwise unexceptional 1737 English language edition of Horace’s 'Odes, Satyrs and Epistles' – lacking a portrait and three text pages – sold for the substantial sum of £50,000 in the Bonhams (27.5/25/20/13.9%) sale on June 26 is to be found on the front endpaper notes shown below.

Not always predicted but overwhelming when it comes, big-money Russian interest sent a bronze equine group soaring at Dawson’s (23% buyer’s premium) in Maidenhead.

Our weekly selection from salerooms.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.