North-west England

Cheshire auctioneer Adam Partridge is in talks with the administrator of Wright Marshall Fine Art Auctioneers to buy its Knutsford fine art business.

Percy Kelly (1918-93) was so averse to the limelight that only a few of his paintings were ever shown publicly during his life. But a major retrospective in 2015 and a birth centenary last year has helped raise the Cumbrian artist’s profile – and his prices.

Miners heading to work in the early morning with lit lamps, denizens of northern pubs with flat caps and pipes, women pushing prams or hanging up the washing: these figures populate the works of Norman Cornish (1919-2014), the ‘pitman painter’.

Diane Evans-Taylor is a vintage dealer and runs an upholstery business in the Cumbrian town of Ulverston.

Organiser says expectations are high for new showground fair starting at end of the month.

Featuring in the same two-day auction as a £7000 cache of Beatrix Potter ephemera found in a Cumbrian Victorian villa which had made national headlines, this less-heralded sofa impressed at 1818 Auctioneers (17.5% buyer’s premium).

As the vast majority of Georgian clockmakers signed their work, most regional brass-dial longcase clocks have a great sense of place.

Rusty, dusty and damaged, but bearing the magic of Marklin, a pre-First World War toy train emerged from the garage at a local house clearance. It starred in a collectors sale at the Cumbrian saleroom of 1818 Auctioneers (20% buyer’s premium inc VAT).

When it comes to buying limited-edition prints by LS Lowry (1887-1976), those produced by one publisher in particular stand out above the rest for collectors.

Two cased Stuart Devlin silver gilt surprise eggs of unique designs sold for £4400 at 1818 Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) in Milnthorpe on April 1.

In the proud tradition of UK provincial auction houses, the 2000-lot, three-day sale at Mitchells (20% buyer’s premium) offered a world of artefacts from way beyond its Lakeland base of Cockermouth.

A bound volume of early works on a famous automaton chess player, featured in ATG No 2387, was not the only lot in a recent Cumbrian sale to produce a handsome return.

A pad top bracket clock signed Mary Wignall and Sons Ormskirk is included at The Arley Hall Antiques & Fine Art Fair, the next event from Galloway Antiques Fairs.

A 23-year-old paratrooper’s account of escaping the Battle of Arnhem sold for £3200, over 10 times the top estimate at 1818 Auctioneers (20% buyer’s premium inc VAT) of Milnthorpe, Cumbria, on March 5.