South-west England

TWO provincial salerooms have been revived and another is under new ownership as the UK auction scene enters the traditionally busy spring season.

This exceptional Regency centre table shot to £96,000 (plus premium) at Bearnes of Exeter on March 1.

More details have emerged of art and antiques stolen during the multi-million pound raid on Ramsbury Manor, home of property developer Harry Hyams, on the evening of February 1.

Pictures released of some of the stolen items

Two fine lots of 17th century English pewter greeted New Year bidders in the country.

Helped by a £2.6m windfall, Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis emerged from 2005 as the largest-grossing UK provincial saleroom.

Gloucester auctioneers Bruton Knowles are experimenting with a new software package that allows online visitors to turn selected objects 360 degrees for a detailed inspection.

The second tranche of a private collection of nutmeg graters was offered at Woolley & Wallis’ October 19 sale.

The final 51 lots of Woolley & Wallis’s sale on October 19 comprised the Fauconberg & Conyers Heirlooms.

“Someday,” wrote The Times in August 1912, “collectors will ransack the town for Martin’s artistic stonewares.”

The cosy Dorset town of Sherborne is not usually associated with bloody revolution and armed struggle, but Sherborne-based Charterhouse Auctioneers have unearthed two items redolent with memories of the American Revolution.

When Alex Butcher’s eye was drawn to this painting, right, he did not realise that part of the attraction might have been its familiarity.

Longcases sell well after prices hit plateauTHE 530 lots offered at Dreweatt Neate’s Bristol rooms in June covered most areas of the antiques trade with the exception of ceramics, but the sale was always going to be dominated by the strong 44-lot clocks section.

IT was just three weeks into the First World War when British destroyers engaged the enemy off the Heligoland Bight near Denmark.

Classic English furniture continues to bring good prices at auction providing the quality is there – and this Regency sofa table, right, certainly filled that requirement when it was offered at the March 3 sale in Cornwall held by Bonhams Par (17.5% buyer’s premium).

Lays, Penzance, March 17-18. Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent A BRONZE statue, Vanity by Sir William Hamo Thornycroft R.A. (1850-1925), was the most sought-after entry at this Cornish outing.

LAST week’s ATG included a short piece on a 1566 poem by Patrick Adamson, giving thanks for the birth of a son to Mary Queen of Scots, that made £3100 in a Dominic Winter sale of April 6.

Capping a sell-out sale of the first instalment of a private collection of nutmeg graters at Woolley and Wallis on April 20 was this unusual Victorian novelty specimen fashioned as a hinged strawberry, which sold for £8200.

IT is every auctioneer’s dream to find a treasure in a box of odds and ends. How much more exciting it must be when that treasure also proves to be of academic importance, a candidate for the title of the earliest figure in English blue and white porcelain.

Special Postcard Auctions, Cirencester, February 28, Buyer’s premium: 10 per cent THE First World War was the main attraction at the Corinium Galleries when a single silk showing a bearded Un Diable Bleu – the nickname given to France’s gallant and celebrated Chasseurs Alpin regiment – led the day at £290, and a similar portrait bust of Un Poilu (infantryman) made £230.