Auctions

A Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund sword of £100 value took the honours at a Bonhams’ (27.5/25/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) sale of arms and armour.

The eclectic collection of Alison Barker (1951-2021) of London and Chichester was sold by Trevanion in Whitchurch, Shropshire on January 12.

In the early 1880s Alfred Barnard, secretary of Harper’s Weekly Gazette (the magazine that morphed into today’s Harpers Wine & Spirit), decided to visit all distilleries in Scotland, England and Ireland.

This small wood and fibre glass sculpture by Banksy (b.1974) formed part of the street artist’s 'Great British Spraycation' series that emerged at British seaside destinations over the summer.

Lyon & Turnbull’s single-owner sale titled The Minoprio Collection: British Design in the Arts & Crafts Tradition included some very strong prices for mid-century Cotswolds School furnishings.

The scene on this 19in (43cm) Yongzheng famille rose dish depicts the Daoist immortal Magu on her way to celebrate the famous peach banquet of the Queen Mother of the West, Xi Wang Mu, who rules over the garden of the peaches of longevity.

This Qing bronze fragment measuring a substantial 19in (47cm) across was once part of a magnificent sculpture of a crane that adorned an imperial palace.

American artist Alfred Cohen (1920-2001) was inspired by the colour and handling of the Post-Impressionists and the imagery of the Commedia dell’arte.

Many Chinese export porcelain forms were inspired by European silver or ceramic forms.

The ubiquitous First World War memorial plaques – the ‘death penny’ – need to have a posthumous recipient of note to sell for anything more than £50-100.

The highest single price posted in the regions during the autumn series of Asian art sales was the £380,000 bid at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) in Dorchester for a monumental Sino-Tibetan gilt bronze devotional figure of Tara broadly dated to the Qing period.

Indian talismanic shirts or Qur’an jama were believed to carry protective powers.

Christopher Dresser created a number of daring geometric designs for silver and silver-plated toast racks in the late 1870s and early 1880s, both for Hukin & Heath and for James Dixon & Son.

Still a figure of glamour 450 years after her execution, Mary Queen of Scots was reputed to have embroidered the c.16th century fragment of bed curtain sold at Hansons (25% buyer’s premium) at Etwall on December 7.

Despite his famous name, the artist Henry Strachey (1863-1940) has never had much prominence at auction, with only around a dozen works having emerged.