South-east England

The resurgent interest in quality Japanese material and the slower revival of English furniture were both evident in a cabinet on stand sold at West Sussex auction house Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium).

Britain still has many ‘antiques’ towns and streets – those picturesque corners of the island populated by shops, galleries and centres that together act as a magnet for antiques tourists. Two of the largest communities of dealers close to London are Petworth and Hungerford, while a busy schedule of regular fairs and markets takes place to the south-west of London.

Inscribed by Winston Churchill “…For Mrs Johnston in these great days”, a 1941 (second) edition of 'Into Battle', the first of a number of collections of his wartime speeches to be published, was part of a lot that sold for a higher than predicted £3000 in a Surrey sale.

Mallams (20% buyer’s premium) offered 12 impeccably provenanced pieces by Peter Waals (1870-1937) at Oxford on May 23.

The annual three-day Kent County Show is a big favourite in the southeast of England and has been held at the Kent County Showground, near Maidstone since 1964.

Jane Alexander of Dovehouse Fine Antiques Fairs is always pleased to welcome new faces to her antiques fairs at the Dorking Halls in Surrey.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

A testimony to its popularity, the small weekly fleamarket in Buckingham has been running for more than 25 years.

A three-day biannual vintage and collectors’ fair held outdoors on a farm near Hailsham in East Sussex is now in its second year. It runs this weekend from Friday to Sunday, June 21-23.

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.

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.

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.

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.