Essex

Among the best-performing lots at the latest mammoth sale held by TimeLine in Harwich, Essex was this 1st-2nd century hollow-formed bronze foot.

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 major changes to Sworders’ auction calendar because of the coronavirus lockdown is the addition of a monthly sale of jewellery, watches and objects of vertu.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales including a Frank O Salisbury portrait.

The latest Fine Interiors sale at Sworders (25% buyer’s premium) included among the opening lots this large 22in (54cm) high maiolica storage jar.

Sworders is launching a new calendar of online-only and timed online auctions to satisfy demand from clients for sales next month.

The first 20 lots of the recent football memorabilia sale at Stacey’s in Rayleigh, Essex came from the family of the Edwardian player Benjamin Warren (1879-1917).

Painting of Evening Star reflects end of an era as coal-fired locomotives started to hit the buffers.

Among the rarest of all Subbuteo games invented and manufactured by Peter Adolph in Tunbridge Wells are those without a sporting theme.

An eyewitness account of the trial of two elderly widows on charges of witchcraft proved one of the more successful lots in a truly Out of the Ordinary sale held in Essex on February 11.

Our weekly selection from salerooms.

The recent auction of 20th century design at Sworders (25% buyer’s premium) in Stansted Mountfitchet was underpinned by more than 60 consignments from the estate of MJ Long.

Modestly catalogued as English School, 1960s, a Modern British study of a head emerged as one of the top-selling pictures at Sworders (25% buyer’s premium) in Stansted Mountfitchet.

Items from the homes of MJ Long (1939-2018) and Colin ‘Sandy’ St John Wilson (1922-2007), the husband and wife team that designed the British Library, come for sale at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet later this month.

Provincial by geography but far from provincial in outlook, auction houses from Essex to the Yorkshire Dales underlined the international nature of their trade at recent auctions. Cosmopolitanism covered both what was on offer and who was buying.

A pair of engravings after Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-69) sold for more than six-times estimate at auction in Essex.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales including a Herbert Thomas Dicksee polar bear print.