East Sussex

After 50 years of buying at markets and shops, Oscar winner opens new venue to the public.

A children’s book estimated at £20-40 in a May 14 sale held by Pippa Deeley (15% buyer’s premium) in Bodiam, East Sussex, was sold instead at £2200.

Dictionary inscription is that of the crime novelist’s maiden name, adding to value.

Picasso produced more than 3500 ceramic designs and created 633 different ceramic editions between 1947-71.

Two very different lots from a Sussex sale are noted here: a German manuscript of Lenten sermons and the tale of a toy rabbit.

Despite his famous name, the artist Henry Strachey (1863-1940) has never had much prominence at auction, with only around a dozen works having emerged.

Paintings of caves including a view from a Channel Island in the spotlight at two salerooms

The game of golf (originating on the eastern coast of Scotland) and mauchlineware (the name given to a family of wooden souvenirs made in south-west Scotland over a period of a century) would seem ideal bedfellows.

Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) designed two electroplated claret or water jugs for Elkington & Co of Birmingham in 1885 – both of them daring designs inspired by vessels from antiquity.

The original ‘Poohsticks’ bridge from AA Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books is to return to the ‘Hundred Acre Wood’ after it was bought by Buckhurst Park estate owner Lord De La Warr.

A Venetian painting attributed to the great Canaletto (1697-1798) was offered at Gorringe’s (23% buyer’s premium) latest auction, selling for £300,000.

Estimated at £100-150, this pair of 4in (11cm) Chinese vases sold for an estimate-busting £39,000 at Gorringe’s (23% buyer’s premium) in Lewes.

A painting of Venice’s Dogana da Mar painted from the Bacino di San Marco which has been attributed to Canaletto (1697-1768) will be offered at Gorringe’s of Lewes in the autumn.

Lewes is well known to antiques and vintage-hunters.

The planned 30-stand Designer and Makers’ Fair on July 17-18 at Charleston Manor, near Lewes in East Sussex was cancelled at the beginning of July.

Discovered lying unrecognised on a bookcase in a Sussex cottage, a unique edition of Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard will be offered at Gorringe’s this month with a £100,000-150,000 estimate.

Out on the Romney Marshes in east Sussex is a series of small buildings that is Hoof Brocante.

The increasingly contentious issue of selling Benin works of art at auction raised its head again last week after an ancestral plaque catalogued as 16th or 17th century was withdrawn from an East Sussex sale.

Two English Orientalists made the biggest impression at a recent sale at Gorringe’s (23% buyer’s premium) in Lewes.