Auctions

Personal devotional prayer books, known as a Book of Hours, were popular among the wealthy and powerful in late medieval Europe. Illuminated with miniature paintings depicting the life of Christ, the Virgin Mary and saints, they were sometimes personalised for the patrons who commissioned them.

The Bordoni and the Luini were not the only strong results achieved in the Drouot auction centre in the November sales.

The height of fashion nearly three centuries ago, this 18th century doll’s dress caught the eye at C&T’s (20% buyer’s premium) specialist sale in Tunbridge Wells.

Two November sales underlined the current strength of the field of British studio pottery.

Specialist Philip Smith, head of the 20th Century & Modern British Art departments at the London outlet of Edinburgh auction house Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium), believes studio ceramics should be classed as art.

Less often seen than Suffragette propaganda and considerably less PC these days, a brass and enamel fob badge for the National League for Opposing Woman had its international admirers at Ipswich auction house Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium).

Possibly dating from the late 16th or early 17th century, a Spanish text manuscript version of Andrea Alciato’s 1531 'Emblemata', the first and most frequently reprinted emblem book, sold for $9000 (£7030) at Swann (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in New York.

The Château de Pontchartrain and the Phélypeaux family who lived there for almost two centuries was much in evidence as a provenance in the recent sales in Paris.

Albert Moulton Foweraker’s (1873-1942) main interest as a watercolourist was the effect of blue moonlight on the landscape.

A vase by the great cameo glass artist George Woodall (1850-1925) was offered at auction for the first time at Bonhams’ sale of Fine Glass and British Ceramics last week.

This rare late-17th century 4in (9.5cm) devotional pendant displays the craft of 'scherenschnitte' (scissor cuts).