South-east England

Two items in focus at Midhurst

While furniture and books fully justified its title, The Oxford Library Sale at Mallams (22.5% buyer’s premium) was led by a surprise star: a rather lowly regarded gesso bust of the sort that would have been a minor decoration to such a room.

According to patent documents dated February 1928, Woodlite headlamps invented by a William G Woods of Los Angeles were said to give the driver better illumination of distant objects ahead.

The market for both film and music posters is booming but original artwork for such designs can also be a very collectable option for buyers.

As well as painting sunny pictures of children on the beaches of Cornwall, Dorothea Sharp (1874-1955) frequently turned her paintbrush to still-lifes.

Shin-hanga, meaning ‘new prints’, emerged in Japan during the early 20th century. Aimed at Western tastes, the artistic movement combined the traditional colourful woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e with nostalgic and romanticised Japanese subjects.

Sold for £4600 in a February 6 sale held in the Chichester salerooms of Stride & Son (18% buyer’s premium) was an album of cut-paper work produced by Elizabeth Cobbold c.1810-20.

New Midhurst owner keeps the Emmott Promotions name going

This early-20th century snow scene, below, was painted by the French artist Paul Elie Gernez (1888-1948). He was primarily a naturalist painter of still-lives, landscapes and seascapes, and spent much of his life in Honfleur in Normandy.

A key feature of the ceramics section of Dreweatts’ sale on February 19 will be 55 lots from a local private collection featuring 18th century English porcelain.

An antiques centre specialising in militaria including books has opened in the Bedfordshire town of Biddenham.

Accounts of youthful travels in Britain and on a Grand Tour contain often blunt assessments

“As soon as the vendor pulled the board from her bag, I recognised something of serious interest.”

Grandma’s Attic Fairs has announced that its quarterly antiques and collectors’ fairs at the Botleigh Grange Hotel in Southampton have ceased due to the hotel’s sudden closure in mid-January, although a new venue has been found.

Popular in the first decades of the 19th century, the eight-key flute is something of a transitional instrument, retaining many of the characteristics of the earlier baroque flute and the modern instrument.

Two large watercolours painted by Y Ba Nyan (1897-1947), one of Burma’s most influential Modern artists, emerged for sale in Folkestone at the end of last year.

A dealer in the antiques-rich town of Petworth is launching a vintage, antiques and militaria fair in her hometown of Petersfield in Hampshire.