South-east England

A rare Roman gold aureus, found by a metal detectorist in a field in Kent earlier this year, was hammered down at Dix Noonan Webb last week for a house record £460,000.

Desmond Morris on his many lives as a zoologist, painter, author and collector

Golden Age collaboration between two London clockmakers leads a look at the market including hammer highlights, auction previews and dealer news.

London’s horse dealers, auctioneers and cab-yards are among the most memorable subjects painted by Camden Town Group founder Robert Bevan (1865-1925) during the early 20th century.

Eardley Norton, who is listed at 49 St John’s Street, Clerkenwell between 1762- 94, enjoyed a reputation as a skilled mechanic and the maker of complex timepieces, sometimes with musical and astronomical movements.

The series of Victorian carriage clocks by James McCabe – the son of a Belfast clockmaker of the same name who came to London in the 1770s and worked at the Royal Exchange from 1804 – are typically beautifully made with exemplary twin fusee striking movements.

Remarkably, of the approximately 110 clockmakers recorded working in Lewes from the mid-17th to the early 19th centuries, as many as 10 were operating almost side-by-side at this town on the River Ouse in the late 18th century.

These two mahogany library mantel timepieces – for sale at Dreweatts of Donnington Priory in the autumn – were supplied to HM Government by Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy in the early days of Victoria’s reign.

Early printed books, among them a Bible of 1476, were a notable feature of a recent West Sussex sale.

“It seemed that the world and his wife and most of Surrey came out for our inaugural Sunday Sandown fair, the complimentary Pimms flowed and the afternoon jazz set from Sabina Desir and Nick Adams, who trades at both our Tuesday markets and is nifty on the ivories as well, set the tone perfectly.”

A remarkable cache of paintings depicting bomb-scarred London during the Blitz by a Jewish artist who devoted herself to a life of altruistic endeavour sold at an auction in Sussex.

A chinoiserie corner cupboard bearing the paper trade label of the Queen Anne furniture maker John Coxed has been sold by Oxfordshire dealership Alexander George Fine Antiques.

A large Persian lustre tile dating from c.1300 sold for £95,000 at John Nicholson’s in Haslemere last month.

This pastel portrait of a Singaporean merchant by Percy Carpenter (1820-95) is believed to have broken a 30-year auction record for the artist.

While British studio potters were battling to break through in the 1930s, established factories, even Moorcroft, were struggling to survive the Great Depression.

The May 22 sale at Dreweatts of Donnington Priory titled Japanese, Islamic and Indian Works of Art included a collection of Iznik and Damascus tiles from the estate of the artist Sir Howard Hodgkin (1932-2017).

As part of their first world tour, The Beatles played the Princess Theatre in Hong Kong twice in June 1964.

The hope at every house clearance came true for Reading auctioneer Chris Boreham when he unearthed this set of four Georgian silver rococo candlesticks at a local home.

In the Late Middle Ages the chaplet, made in many materials from boxwood to precious metals, was a commonplace aid to keep count of the repetition of prayers or the chapters read in a Book of Hours.