South-west England

Somerset fair features more than 50 dealers with theme of ‘antiques in a contemporary home’.

Underlining the market move from antique furniture to 20th century craftsman design, a 1982-83 chest of drawers set a record for a work by Alan Peters at the Modern British Living sale at Mallams (22.5% buyer’s premium) in Cheltenham.

A tribal war club from the Marquesas Islands with textbook provenance has sold for £71,000 at Woolley & Wallis. The u’u (head club) came for sale at the Salisbury saleroom from the descendants of an early-19th century missionary.

Emporium Antiques in Liskeard currently has on its site an item of local interest. This is a memorial shield, below, to the Honourable Thomas Agar-Robartes (1880-1915) who was elected as a Liberal MP for his home town of Bodmin in the 1906 general election.

Built in the 1960s, the family-owned Bedruthan Hotel at Mawgan Porth, near Newquay on the north Cornish coast, is set in a dramatic clifftop location overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

The Lostwithiel Antique Fair was started by Lynne and Richard Bonehill (the late actor and sabre champion). The current organisers Anne and Nigel Allen will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the monthly fair on Sunday, October 13, in the town’s community centre.

The 19-acre former South Crofty tin and copper mine in the village of Pool, near Redruth in west Cornwall, closed as recently as 1996 and is now part of a local mining landscape World Heritage Site.

Bearing a modest estimate of £50-75 but sold instead at £800 by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (23% buyer’s premium) on September 4 was a copy of 'Women’s Suffrage: a Short History of a Great Movement' (1912) by that renowned campaigner for women’s political rights, Millicent Garrett Fawcett.

Our weekly selection from salerooms.

Antiques Fairs Cornwall, which runs a biannual two-day fair at the Royal Cornwall Showground, holds its regular monthly antiques and collectors’ fair at Pensilva near Liskeard. This is the largest one-day fair in Cornwall with up to 74 stands.

Signed by its author to the title-page, a 1939 first of TS Eliot’s 'Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats' sold for £4300 in a Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) auction.

The jewellery sale at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury on October 30 includes over 60 engraved gems – both ancient and Neoclassical – from several single-owner collections. A selection of rings is pictured here:

Spotlight on the county’s many opportunities for antiques hunting.

Daniel Mendoza is considered one of the first ‘modern’ boxers – one who helped elevate boxing to a sport rather than just two blokes beating each other up.

Christopher Jones specialises in 18th, 19th and 20th century decorative antiques, furniture, lighting and porcelain. He next stands at the Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair in Battersea from October 1-6.

Inspired by LS Lowry, the self-taught Mancunian artist Fred Yates (1922-2008) set out to paint pictures about the lives of ordinary people. These canvases – ranging from the industrial architecture and street life of Manchester to the sunnier scenes he painted after his move to Cornwall in 1969 – attract a loyal following on the secondary market.

A gold, jade and rock crystal model of a sedan chair by Fabergé was hammered down at £380,000 last week – a new house record for a Gloucestershire auctioneer.