Features

Traditional picturesque views of Scotland show signs of a market revival

A selection of period and vintage jewellery lots for sale in January, February and March.

Covid-19 has played havoc with the jewellery fairs and auction calendar but it has done little to dull the appetite for quality antique and vintage pieces.

A London auction offering ceramics fans a treat thanks to single-owner collections and a mixed array leads a look at the market as a whole

Bonhams has a long tradition of single-owner sales devoted to noted collections of early English porcelain.

A recent sale at Franklin Browns (18% buyer’s premium) in Edinburgh on included one of the most ambitious and most desirable of all early 19th century Staffordshire figure groups: the 'Polito’s Menagerie of the wonderful burds and beasts from most parts of the world'.

A collection of English pottery offered by Adam Partridge (20% buyer’s premium) in Macclesfield included this early 19th century copper lustre and transfer printed ‘anti-slavery’ mug.

When the Bolshevik government took control of the Imperial Porcelain Factory following the October Revolution of 1917, large quantities of glazed but unpainted white hard-paste porcelain plates, cups and saucers remained at the site.

The Welsh Sale at Rogers Jones (22% buyer’s premium) in Cardiff included a large section of Welsh ceramics from a west Wales estate.

The rules of kriegsspiel (war game), popular at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, were partly based on the much older game of chess. Typically, kriegsspiel was played across three boards, with players only knowing the position of their own pieces and an umpire officiating.

The mixed-owner element of a recent Onslows’ sale included a William Russell Flint (1890-1969) LNER poster showing Bamburgh Castle.

Poster auction in New York includes fine examples of British Art Deco rail travel designs

A year like no other certainly produced more than a few significant challenges for the art and antiques trade but determination and flexibility – and, of course, the internet – have been key factors in businesses surviving and some even doing very well, as the ATG team reports

Swann Galleries (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) held a Travel Posters sale where one of the best-sellers was a 1939 poster for Pan Am airlines.

Four lots of French railway posters attracted a good deal of attention at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) on December 9-10.

Whether it was holding live sales in the garden or in the front room – or with a parrot for company – auctioneers who were determined that the show must go on found a way to make it happen during the early weeks of the first lockdown (see photos).

This 1930s Soviet travel poster promotes Trans Siberian Express Shortest way between Europe and the Far East, for Intourist Moscow, Hotel Metropol represented by all main travel bureaus of the world.

Posters promoting travel to a variety of destinations round the world were among the best sellers in a recent Potter & Potter (20% buyer’s premium) sale in Chicago.

It’s time to pit your art and antiques brains against the ATG giant prize crossword.

A notable source of ancient coins and historical jewellery appearing on the market in 2020 has been the soil. It is the success of the Portable Antiquities Scheme that finders of ‘treasure’ are now encouraged to declare discoveries and share the proceeds of sales with the landowner.