Auction Reports

The West as well as the East made a major contribution to the success of Gorringe’s £1m sale on March 30 where, overall, 86% of the 593 lots sold.

Estimated at £60-80 but sold at £11,500, this set of 14-point deer antlers provided Martel Maides (17.5% buyer’s premium) with a sensational result.

The best known of the decorators who worked at Aynsley in the 20th century is the flower painter Joseph A Bailey.

The name ‘peg tankard’ comes from the vertical row of pegs inside that can be used to measure the amount of alcohol drunk as it was passed around a table.

The sale of Islamic Art & Antiquities at Roseberys London (25% buyer’s premium) on March 31 included this New Kingdom yellow quartzite shabti fragment.

Michael Harris signature piece sells well at auction alongside Louis Osman silver spoons set

This particular form of English delft puzzle jug, with its distinctive knopped neck, seems to be peculiar to the second half of the 17th century.

When Cecil Beaton photographed the Wyndham-Quin sisters in 1950, he chose to copy both the setting and poses used 50 years earlier by John Singer Sargent in The Wyndham Sisters.

With hindsight, the boast made by the Flying Steam Company – 'To China in Twenty-Four Hours Certain' – was a tad ambitious.

Experiments with porcelain at the Swansea factory began in 1814 with the arrival of William Billingsley and Samuel Walker from the Nantgarw China Works.

This rare Bow figure was spotted by English porcelain specialists at Kingham & Orme’s (23% buyer’s premium) two-day auction of Fine and Decorative Arts.

The sale at Adam Partridge (20% buyer’s premium) in Macclesfield on March 18-19 included a collection of 18th century English porcelain figures offered in around 30 lots.

At 20in (50cm) long, this stylised tinplate racer and driver was the largest toy car made by the German toymaker Johann Distler.

The work of French designer Fred Brouard (1944-99) is not uncommon at sales in France and the US but seldom appears at auction in the UK.

Peter Closon (c.1594-c.1662) was one of the most prolific of the so-called First Period lantern clock makers – although little is known about his life.

Apprenticed to John Flaxman at the turn of the 19th century, Joseph Gott (1785-1860) travelled to Rome in 1822 on a pension from Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Two very different ceramic objects illuminated The Spring Auction at Halls (20% buyer’s premium) in Shrewsbury on March 17.

The Winter Antiques Sale at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) was topped by consecutive bids of £17,000 each for two Regency white marble busts.

This bust of the first American president George Washington (1732-99) is titled to the base, and signed and dated 'R Trentanove Fecc in Roma, 1827'.

This 3in (7.5cm) brass and ivorine fishing reel is inscribed to the face 'Ustonson & Peters, Makers to the Queen, 48 Bell Yard, Temple Bar, London'.