Auction Reports

Keeping cool was just one of the many uses of the Georgian and Victorian fan.

Estimated at just £50-70, this Chinese porcelain saucer dish sold online for £7850 at Edinburgh saleroom Franklin Browns (15% buyer’s premium).

Fine examples lead an array of scientific instruments and photographica at specialist sale

This 8½in (21cm) Delft blue and white tulip vase below is typical in style and form of the De Metale Pot (The Metal Pot) factory.

The Chad Valley tinplate toy 'The Climbing Miller' is based closely on an earlier ‘gravity’ toy called 'Gustav the Busy Miller' that was one of Lehmann’s most popular issues made for close to 50 years in the pre-war era.

A group of portrait miniatures sold recently by John Nicholson’s (30/25% buyer’s premium) in Haslemere, Surrey included this English school image, c.1700, of William Fermor, 1st Baron Leominster.

Scotland’s key role in the 18th and 19th century China trade has a legacy. Some of the nation’s country houses remain the repository of important Far Eastern works of art.

It was not just the great and good of 18th century Europe and North America who commissioned the Thirteen Factories at Canton to embellish Chinese porcelain blanks with family armorials or subjects copied from prints.

This couture gown, sold for £360 at Sworders (25% buyer’s premium), was once owned by the woman who hosted the wedding of Wallis Simpson and the Duke of Windsor.

Among the top-estimated lots at the Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium) sale of African & Oceanic Art, Antiquities and Natural History in Edinburgh on May 5 was a hammered bronze Apulo-Corinthian helmet from southern Italy, c.350-500BC.

Svend Hammershøi (1873-1948), younger brother of painter Vilhelm, is best known as a ceramicist but he was also a silversmith.

Covid-19 crisis has launched the art and antiques world into technological exploration

This 3ft (91cm) high hard-sided 'tik', or Torah scroll container is representative of the type used in the Sephardic tradition.

The sale held by Swan Fine Art (20% buyer’s premium) in Tetsworth on May 6 included a fine-quality ventriloquist’s doll, c.1930.

The team at antiques dealership Robert Mills Architectural spent decades salvaging items from closed-down churches, banks, mansions and pubs.

Results from two salerooms including an £18,000 longcase reflect strong demand

Trudpert Schneider (1804-99), a Freiburg carpenter whose first brush with photography was to repair a broken box camera, is today deemed one of Germany’s most important daguerreotypists.

This vessel with its cluster of bottles around a central conical vase is one of several well-known Dresser-Linthorpe models that owe a debt to pre-Columbian art.

At Keys (20% buyer’s premium) in Aylsham a lot catalogued as ‘a patinated bronze group of a lion attacking a horse’ drew – and to an extent commanded – much attention.

A gold winner’s medal awarded for the 1893 FA Cup – Wolverhampton Wanderers’ first major trophy – sold for £8000 at Mullock’s (20% buyer’s premium) on April 29-30.