Surrey

The sale at garden statuary specialist Summers Place Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) in Billingshurst on March 24 (the day after lockdown) was among the first conducted under new government restrictions on social distancing.

Bid to £4100 and £3000 in a sale held by Lawrences (20% buyer’s premium) of Bletchingley were two albums, or ledgers, relating to the business of violin maker WE Hill & Sons – both with a direct family provenance.

An early coastal scene of Australia sold for more than five times its top estimate to an online buyer from New South Wales at Ewbank’s anniversary sale.

A superb collection of 61 pocket watches drew strong demand at a Surrey auction last week as remote bidders, using the phone and online platforms, competed for some outstanding 17th, 18th and 19th century examples.

A valuation day in Tunbridge Wells led to the consignment of a late-16th century south German rosewood and bone gaming board at Catherine Southon.

A copy of Sylvia Plath’s 'The Bell Jar' in a well-preserved dust jacket sold for £3000 in a recent Surrey auction may have set a record for any uninscribed or association copy.

A copy of JRR Tolkien’s 'The Hobbit' offered in a recent Surrey sale was a first-impression one of 1937, but essentially defined by its truly sad and defective condition.

This early-20th century portrait by Ronald Ossory Dunlop (1894-1973) depicts the actor and artist Jean Shepeard (1904-89).

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.

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.

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

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

The English artist, illustrator and author Christopher ‘Kit’ Williams (b.1946) is best known for the book 'Masquerade', the pictorial storybook which contained clues to the location of an 18ct gold jewelled hare buried somewhere in the British countryside. It created quite a sensation in 1979.

Alongside pieces made in Kinsale, Galway and Waterford, silver from the small County Cork town of Youghal is among the scarcest of all Irish provincial silver. Only a handful of pieces survive that carry the punning town mark of a yawl.

The sale at John Nicholson’s (25% buyer’s premium) in Haslemere on October 24 included a substantial collection of ancient (or ancient style) coloured glassware: more than 60 pieces sold across half a dozen group lots.

This classic mail coach scene by the 19th century painter James Pollard (1792-1867) doubled pre-sale hopes in a picture auction at Surrey saleroom John Nicholson’s (25% buyer’s premium).

Launched two years ago at a Victorian mansion at Nutley in Surrey by local antiques dealer David Steel, the 25-dealer 'Tree of Ages Antiques Fair' runs four times a year at Robert Denholm House.