Auctions

Mother of pearl and olivewood devotional objects were made in Jerusalem in large quantities as tourism to the Holy Land took off in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The sale at Young’s (25% buyer’s premium) in Farnham, Surrey, on November 25 included jewels and objects of vertu with royal provenances.

A bronze from Frederick Edward McWilliam’s (1909-92) Women of Belfast series of sculptures sold for £37,000 at Halls (24% buyer’s premium) on December 6.

Corporate collection of British American Tobacco includes choice antique items related to the habit

Valuable art and antiques can be discovered in all sorts of places, inside and outside the home, obvious or not

Up in North Yorkshire, it was a view of a landscape down south that led Tennants’ (24% buyer’s premium) British, European & Sporting Art sale.

An impressive result emerged at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood on December 5 when a travel album titled The Ramblings and Adventures of an Indian Officer was knocked down at £135,000.

It was around 1860 that the trained artist François Willème (1830-1905) began to experiment with photography as a way to create sculpture.

Without doubt, the sensation of the German auction season was the emergence of a sketchbook belonging to the German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich at Grisebach (32/27% buyer’s premium) in Berlin.

A recently rediscovered version of one of the best-known Guild of Handicraft designs is up for sale at Sworders.

Trained at the Krakow School of Fine Arts as well as the Paris École des Beaux Arts, Jacek Malczewski (1854-1929) is credited for the rise in popularity of symbolism in late 19th and early 20th-century Poland.

Our selection of lots from seven upcoming UK and Irish auctions

A wide range of eastern European works is increasingly attracting strong demand at auction

Few people can profess to know more about the 1910-12 Japanese Antarctic Expedition than the Arizona book dealer Chet Ross.

The small German beakers known as monatsbecher (‘month beakers’) were made in sets of a dozen: one for each month of the year.

Held by the same private New England family since 1792, a copy of 'A Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean' complete with its map came for sale at Bonhams Skinner (28/26/20% buyer’s premium).

A couple of headline lots, a scattering of rare and unusual pictures and one of the most valuable consignments of prints ever offered lifted the latest series of Old Master auctions in London.