East of England

A c.1900 half-length oil on canvas portrait of a girl with flowers caught the eye of bidders at Lacy Scott & Knight (24% inc VAT buyer’s premium) in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

Bible suggests confusion over ‘he’ or ‘she’ may not be purely a modern-day phenomenon.

December 10 marked a significant step in the history of specialist sporting and antique gun auction house Holts (25-20% buyer’s premium).

The English artist and poster designer Alfred Thomson (1894-1979) painted this eye-catching depiction of the famous penguin pool at London Zoo.

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.

The sale at Cheffins (22.5% buyer’s premium) in Cambridge on December 12 included a cache of Victorian and earlier silver from the collection of Delaval Astley, 23rd Baron Hastings (b.1960).

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.

Several 19th and 20th century sporting paintings from named estates provided a healthy boost at two regional salerooms.

An intaglio ring became the second of the ‘lost’ Marlborough jewels to surface at auction in 2019 when it sold for £36,000 (plus 22.5% premium) in Cambridge.

A story of extraordinary peacetime gallantry of a Cumbrian seaman turned coalminer was at the heart of a group of medals, photographs and press cuttings offered at Reeman Dansie (20% buyer’s premium) at Colchester on November 28.

Although catalogued as Sèvres, a porcelain cup and saucer sold by Keys (20% buyer’s premium) of Aylsham for an unexpected £5500 (estimate £100-200) on November 27 was by the factory’s precursor at Vincennes. The saucer had the date letter A for c.1754 and the cup B for c.1755.

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.

Two mixed lots of Victorian dust-pressed tiles sold for multi-estimate sums at Mander (24% buyer’s premium inc VAT) in Sudbury on November 30. Key to their appeal were the inclusion of near sets of tiles made by Minton Hollins & Co to designs by Arts & Crafts luminaries.

This rare piece of Cork silver of Irish Republican interest sold for £4000 (plus 23% premium) at Sworders latest sale.

Exuding the exuberant confidence of pre-1914 Britain, this 21in (52cm) long silver table centrepiece, below, was a natural target for the London trade at the Anthemion (17.5% buyer’s premium) November 20 sale in Cardiff.

One of the rarest pieces in Suffolk House Antiques’ Christmas selling exhibition is a Georgian candle stand in fruitwood and elm. The back would have protected the flame so that the person using it would have uninterrupted light even in a draughty house. Examples bearing the original backs do not always show up intact.

Less often seen than Suffragette propaganda and considerably less PC these days, a brass and enamel fob badge for the National League for Opposing Woman had its international admirers at Ipswich auction house Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium).

The regular Halesworth Brocante runs in the Old Print Works on Saturday, December 7, the same day as the Christmas market in the small market town in north Suffolk, 10 miles from the coast.

Launched in Norfolk 10 years ago by local Zoe Keegan, the Little Vintage Lover Fairs team will be back at the same venue where it all started in the pretty coastal village of Blakeney for the winter Christmas fair on Sunday, December 1, at the village hall.