Cumbria

Although the Hugo Lonitz factory produced a range of domestic tablewares and small collectables, it is best known for its naturalistic majolica groups, particularly animal and bird examples modelled in lifelike size and detail.

This rare oak Slazenger tennis racket press featured in the Vintage & Antique toy sale at Mitchells (20% buyer’s premimum) of Cockermouth on July 20.

The prolific artist Percy Kelly (1918-93) was averse to the limelight and only a few of his paintings were shown publicly during his life. But a major retrospective at the Tullie House gallery Carlisle in 2015 and a birth centenary last year has helped raise the Cumbrian artist’s profile.

Entered by a vendor who hated them, a pair of 6in (15.5cm) long 19th century nutcrackers reflected in their way two different aspects of auctioneering today: how smaller country firms see their future and what will happen to antique ivory items when most of the trade in them is banned.

A fine Victorian building in the town of Cockermouth in the Lake District which was built in 1868 for the founder of Mitchell’s Auctions – whose saleroom is still in the town – is now home to the Fairfield House Antiques Centre.

Did a watch offered for sale in Carlisle at the end of July once belong to Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)? Two centuries of provenance suggest it did.

Shown below is a spread from a 120pp manuscript collection of Scottish songs with accompanying musical notation, on paper watermarked 1799, that sold at £600 in a Thomson Roddick (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale.

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

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’.

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.

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).

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).

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 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.

Having stood in the George IV pub in Workington since the 19th century, a mahogany penny slot machine made its last public appearance at Cumbrian auction house Mitchells (20% buyer’s premium).