East Sussex

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.

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.

Lewes is well known to antiques and vintage-hunters.

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of art at auction raised its head again last week after an ancestral plaque catalogued as 16th or 17th century was withdrawn from an East Sussex sale.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

The West as well as the East made a major contribution to the success of Gorringe’s £1m sale on March 30 where, overall, 86% of the 593 lots sold.

This copy of the Uffizi’s Medici Apollo (Apollino) is signed for the Italian sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi (c.1716-99).

If the famous image of the Milton Shield by Elkington and its £800-1200 estimate drew a double-take at a recent auction, there was good reason.

Rated a museum-quality piece, this rare c.1902 spirit-fired Märklin fire engine led the field at toys specialist Wallis & Wallis (24% buyer’s premium).

Some of the best US coin discoveries are today made in the UK.

What is perhaps the earliest dated piece of Irish glass sold at auction in Lewes.

A recent fine art auction at Hansons (25% buyer’s premium) included a once magnificent Qianlong (1735-99) copper-red and underglaze blue lantern vase.