East Midlands

Coins, medals and watches worth over £50,000 have been stolen as a series of museum break-ins continues.

Flick through the pages of an issue of ATG in the 1980s and there are many references to the rising market for Royal Doulton character jugs.

Antiques Roadshow and Midlands auction house Gildings have conspired again to find a second William Burges brooch.

David Stanley Auctions offered the second part of the collection of woodworking tools formed by David R. Russell, renowned for the rarest and finest Norris planes.

On May 26 Golding Young & Thomas Mawer will offer for sale the contents of a Lincolnshire antique dealer’s home.

This silver inkstand made by William Robb of Ballater, assayed in Edinburgh in 1910, is one of ten items by the silversmith to be included at Batemans sale on May 5 in Stamford, Lincolnshire.

WHILE London auctions saw a 25% rise in value for 2011, sales outside the capital have also been growing.

A WELL-PRESERVED James Hammond typewriter from the 1880s is itself a rare item, but the example offered for sale by Gildings in Market Harborough in Leicestershire on February 21 attracted greater interest on account of its first owner, Lewis Carroll (1832-98).

Hansons Auctioneers have opened a new permanent saleroom in Etwall, five miles from Derby city centre. The inaugural sale in the new premises will take place on Thursday, January 19.

A GOLD button which links the two most significant military figures in the foundation of the United States of America – George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette – will be sold in Leicestershire on November 1.

ANTIQUES fairs will be able to continue at Swinderby for some time, despite the site’s prospective development as a gravel pit.

THE owner of a tearoom in Horncastle, Lincolnshire claims he is a victim of bureaucracy after he was told he could face prosecution for selling antiques from the premises.

A SET of four George II silver salts by the celebrated Huguenot silversmith Paul de Lamerie (1688-1751) sold for a double-estimate £19,000 at Hansons' latest sale at the Mackworth Hotel in Derby.

CHURCHILL impersonator Derek Herbert was in Towcester on March 16 to aid Northamptonshire auctioneer Jonathan Humbert in the sale of a pair of acetate tortoiseshell-effect reading glasses that belonged to Sir Winston.

A NEW auction house based at the Silverstone race track opened for business in February.

THE Newark-based fairs organisers B2B Events are launching a fair in May at a new venue in the East Midlands.

AT £5.26m hammer, Sotheby’s three-day dispersal from the attics, stables and stores of the Derbyshire seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, was the ultimate in a ‘dusting down’ sale.

A YEAR after the move to the Lincolnshire Showground, Swallow Fairs are changing the format of their Antiques and Home Show. To take effect from the next event on November 29 to December 1, the show will now officially become a three-day fair running from Monday to Wednesday inclusive.

THIS watercolour sketch comes from a remarkable 120-page First World War journal penned by Lieutenant Kenneth Edwin Wootton of the 1/21 Battalion, London Regt Tank Corps.

SHOWGROUND fair dealers are reminded to be vigilant after a visitor to the recent Newark fair had his pockets slashed.