North-east England

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’.

Victoria, Princess Royal (1840-1901), shed her first baby tooth at the age of seven while the royal family was a guest of the Duke of Abercorn at Ardverikie, by Loch Laggan. Her father Prince Albert tugged the tooth free himself and had it set in gold and enamel as a brooch. The milk tooth formed the blossom of thistle.

A new auction record for a copy of a Viz comic was set during The Comic Book Sale at Anderson & Garland of Newcastle.

Of all the things you might expect to find in a kitchen cupboard, an original oil by Edward Seago (1910-74) is probably not one of them.

Catalogued simply as ‘a pair of English soft-paste porcelain models of parrots’, these rare 18th century figures by Bow sold at Thomas Watson in Darlington, County Durham, for £16,000 (plus 24% buyer’s premium) on May 15.

A small soapstone figure of a grinning, reclining Buddha stole the show at Thomas Watson (24% buyer’s premium) of Darlington when it smashed its estimate of £80-120 to sell for £16,500.

In 1876 Lewis Carroll had 140 copies of 'The Hunting of the Snark. An Agony in 8 Fits' specially bound in gilt decorated cloth for presentation and just a few weeks ago ATG noted the sale at £3600 by Dominic Winter of one of the 20 blue and gold versions.

The value of ‘Outsider’ art continues to grow following the dispersal of one of the UK’s largest collections at Anderson & Garland (25% buyer’s premium).