Pick of the Week

George du Maurier (1834-96) joined the staff at Punch magazine in 1865, drawing two ink cartoons a week until his eyesight deteriorated in 1891. His most common targets were the affected manners of Victorian society and Britain’s growing middle class in particular.

The National Museums of Scotland has been revealed as the buyer of the Storrar Coverlet – a rare woollen textile withdrawn at the 11th hour from a sale at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh in August.

Some of the rarest and most desirable of all English creamware jugs were those made for the American market. One of them, titled Signals at Portland Observatory, sold for $4400/£3600 (plus premium) at the Bourgeault-Horan auction in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

A complete set of plans showing what was once the world’s largest industrial complex and the British state’s single biggest investment has sold in Cornwall. Thomas Milton’s plans of the Royal Dockyards sold to an online buyer for £10,000 (plus 18% buyer’s premium) at David Lay's latest sale in Penzance.

When auctioneer Tony Pratt spotted a mysterious shape in the undergrowth of a back garden in Hythe he wasn’t expecting to uncover a very large pottery bear.

Did a watch offered for sale in Carlisle at the end of July once belong to Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)? Two centuries of provenance suggest it did.

A controversial Second World War poster by renowned designer Abram Games (1914-96) has sold for what is believed to be an auction record.

A rare copy of the earliest-known depiction of a book auction emerged for sale in Gloucestershire at the end of last month.

The origin of ‘Tudor’ globe pomanders is still under discussion. It is generally thought that most originate from northern Europe but were probably made by itinerant craftsmen in a number of countries.

‘Boxing Badgers’ is one of just two known occasions when the celebrated taxidermist Peter Spicer (1839-1935) ventured into the strange world of the anthropomorphic tableau.

A pre-press version of a key map of colonial America emerged for sale at Swann Auction Galleries in New York on June 6. Carrying an estimate of $30,000-50,000, it sold at $100,000/£76,900 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) – a sum that reflected its extraordinary provenance.

Berlin auction house Grisebach posted an auction record for the Swiss artist Karl Stauffer-Bern (1857-91) on May 29 when it sold a self-portrait which had been recently restituted to the family of its original Jewish owners.

A remarkable example of 16th century cross-culture art – a feather ‘mosaic’ picture made in Mexico for Christian conquerors – has been purchased at auction by the Musée du Quai Branly.

In the Late Middle Ages the chaplet, made in many materials from boxwood to precious metals, was a commonplace aid to keep count of the repetition of prayers or the chapters read in a Book of Hours.

A carving of a deerhound which once adorned a 19th century yacht more than doubled the house record for a figurehead at a Charles Miller auction in west London. The item sold for £52,000 had a royal connection but it was the quality and condition which secured the high price, said Miller.

A manuscript for Rebecca and a favourite typewriter were among the top lots in a collection of objects and ephemera once owned by author and playwright Daphne du Maurier (1907-89) sold at Rowley’s in Ely (22.5% buyer’s premium).

Although catalogued as 19th century, this horn, fruitwood and bone inlaid oval patch or snuff box offered by Rogers Jones in Colwyn Bay in north Wales is of a type associated with the late 17th century.

A large oil on panel map by MacDonald Gill celebrating the presence of stationer WH Smith on the British high street in the 1920s was hammered down at £50,000 in Gloucestershire.

Previously unpublished sketches and letters by the American artist and traveller George Catlin (1796-1872) attracted multiple bidders at Forum Auctions in London.

A hunger strike ‘Fed By Force’ medal awarded to Suffragette Selina Martin (1882-1972) has been snapped up at auction by an Australian museum.