South-east England

A sale of Modern First Editions at Bloomsbury Auctions on November 14 includes this ‘near mint’ 1950 copy of Graham Greene’s 'The Third Man and The Fallen Idol'.

Oxford on High has been presented with the antiques retailer of the year award for Oxfordshire by Corporate LiveWire, a quarterly magazine for business professionals and the corporate finance sector.

“From our dealers’ viewpoint the important factor is that the kind of people now attracted to our antiques fair are serious collectors and it’s rare that anyone leaves without making some significant purchases.”

A first portion of the library of the late Eric Gerald Stanley, a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, featured in a recent auction at Mallams.

Underpinned by an 81-lot consignment from the estate of the late Fred Sansome, a famous figure in the world of model railways, the Transport Sale at Dreweatts (25% buyer’s premium) was led by scratch-built locomotives by equally revered names.

Always popular items, a Georgian lead cistern offered at Summers Place Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) was also rare in being circular. Usually they are rectangular, having stood against a wall connected to downpipes.

Sold alongside a pile of Victorian green-glazed leaf plates and dishes, the primary appeal of this lot offered in a weekly sale at Gorringe’s (21% buyer’s premium) of Lewes was the whimsical majolica cheese dish.

A near sell-out show at The Redfern Gallery in London in 1963 immediately established Patrick Procktor (1936-2003), the Dublin-born painter, as a star of the London art scene at the age of just 27.

Original paintings by Abstract artist Nicolas de Stael (1914-55) rarely appear at auction outside the main salerooms in London, Paris and New York.

Many figures involved in the booming 19th century art industry of livestock portraiture had no formal training.

The first printed copy of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica was published in Strasbourg as early as c.1475 with subsequent versions printed in Vienna (1513), Strasbourg again (1500), Haguenau (1506), Paris (1544) and Antwerp (1550).

Turbulent as politics are today, they have yet to reach the rumbustious heights of a notorious 1826 by-election in Northumberland, memories of which were revisited at Newcastle auction house Anderson & Garland (20% buyer’s premium).

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Offered with an a/f catalogue caveat, this early 20th century marine chronometer, below, quadrupled expectations at Chichester saleroom Henry Adams (20% buyer’s premium).

Variety was certainly in evidence in a West Sussex sale, where the teenage journal of a young stained-glass maker, two broadside ballads and an illustrated dummy for 'Down with Skool!' all brought much higher than predicted bids.

Newbury’s Special Auction Services is to expand into a double-height saleroom in the new year.

This 21 x 15in (54 x 39cm) watercolour, below, probably depicting the New Julfa quarter of Isfahan, is by the Armenian-Iranian painter Sumbat Kiureghian (1913- 99).

A late Victorian diamond cluster necklet with an estimated total weight of 14.4cts sold in its original fitted case for £10,500 at Richard Winterton (20% buyer’s premium), Lichfield.

Two English furniture ‘discoveries’ excelled against modest hopes at auction in mid-September. Top-end London dealers bought both pieces.