North-west England

Gene Hoyle, of Lancashire-based family firm Hoyles Promotions, which has been running busy weekly Sunday fleamarkets and car boots across north-west England for 40 years, is adding a “suitcase rummage” to his fleamarkets at Clitheroe Auction Mart in the Lancashire town.

A fresh-to-market consignment involving great names of Art Nouveau/Arts & Crafts and a New York buyer determined to have it… It hasn’t taken long for newcomer Heliers Auction (18% buyer’s premium) to come up with the sort of winning combination all auctioneers hope for.

Holker Hall, the privately owned country house in Cumbria, hosts its first fair in nearly 25 years this month.

In the flourishing market of British studio ceramics, a raft of new names is gaining traction.

Another classic piece of English furniture to go well above expectations was a Regency mahogany window seat in the style of George Bullock offered by the Cumbrian firm 1818 Auctioneers (17/12% buyer’s premium).

A 19th century painted print of a Maori took top honours at Heliers Auction (18% buyer’s premium) in Blackburn, Lancashire.

The year is well under way for Penman Fairs as it gears up for The Chester Antiques Fair.

The New Year is traditionally quiet in the salerooms but the 1800-lot Cheetham collection generated some real excitement at Adam Partridge (18% buyer’s premium) in Macclesfield.

Must-have Christmas presents in the Sixties and Seventies, Sasha dolls have remarkable appeal today.

Maxine Stonehill of Pop Up Vintage Fairs has launched a new vintage fair, this time at the Art Deco Grade II-listed Walthamstow Assembly Hall.

‘Stage Coach Passengers passing Woburn Sands’ is one of 100 coloured engraved caricatures after Isaac Cruikshank that illustrate GM Woodward’s Eccentric Excursions or Literary and Pictorial Sketches in England and South Wales, interspersed with Curious Anecdotes of 1807.

Wright Marshall (21% buyer’s premium) featured a still-life by John Pawle (1915-2010) in its sale on October 28 in Knutsford, Cheshire.

Appearing to be as vividly coloured as when it was made in the 18th century, a brocaded silk robe à l’Anglaise breathed the style and quality associated with its Spitalfields makers.