North-east England

A ‘prominent’ northern English family consigned a seascape by the Dutch Golden Age painter Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-82) to Anderson & Garland (22% buyer’s premium).

Well placed in Tyne & Wear to receive a number of miners’ safety lamps from the old Durham and Northumberland coalfields, Boldon Auction Galleries (17.5% buyer’s premium) was presented with something of a mystery in the form of the lamp pictured here.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne saleroom Anderson & Garland has received a group of works by current market favourite Cedric Morris (1889-1982) which it will offer for sale early next year. The oil 'Spanish Basket of Vegetable No.1 1961', as indicated by labels to the reverse, was exhibited at the Tate’s Morris exhibition in March-May 1984.

The stylish Art Deco pottery figures for which Ars Lenci became celebrated were first shown at the Turin international exhibition in 1928.

Turbulent as politics are today, they have yet to reach the rumbustious heights of a notorious 1826 by-election in Northumberland, memories of which were revisited at Newcastle auction house Anderson & Garland (20% buyer’s premium).

A silver pocket watch by ‘father of British clockmaking’ Thomas Tompion has been literally unearthed in Northumberland.

Ceramics commemorating the coronation of Edward VIII are less rare than often supposed, having been produced in abundance before the coronation was aborted. Most bring relatively small sums.

Edward Bawden (1903-89) produced his celebrated print, Liverpool Street Station, in 1961. He knew the station well – using it regularly when travelling between London and his home in Great Bardfield, Essex.

The antiques trade descended on The Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle for the opening of an exhibition celebrating dealers’ shops, tastes, practices and their role in the creation of museum collections.

The antiques trade is to be celebrated in the New Year at a museum exhibition in County Durham.

Including, as it did, pieces from Alnwick Castle, an ‘attic sale’ based on the Duke of Northumberland’s home was guaranteed to generate more interest than many similarly titled auctions.

For most enthusiasts of Airfix’s plastic construction kits, it was the company’s dramatic box artwork that caught the eye when choosing the next model to make.

A view of a Tyneside street by Spennymoor mining artist Norman Cornish (1919-2014) took £5500 at local auction house Anderson & Garland (20% buyer’s premium).

Considering that W Britain began making his revolutionary hollowcast toy soldiers only in 1893, a set dating from just three years later certainly deserves the tag ‘early’.