South-west England

Antiques dealer and fair organiser Marcus Potts is an Art Deco and early 20th century ceramics man, but he is an absolute mine of information on vintage toys.

A very modestly estimated job lot of 25 or so books offered in a recent West Country auction went on to sell for £6500 – but what got some bidders excited?

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships

Experimental work by the Czech Expressionist Ernest Neuschul (1895-1968) chimed with current tastes in a sell-out studio sale in Somerset.

Private material sourced from old estates helped Gloucestershire saleroom Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) get the year off to a positive start.

Duke’s of Dorchester has hired a trio of specialists to grow its auction calendar and attract consignments from outside its immediate catchment area.

Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood of Exeter plans to hold its first-ever 20th century and contemporary art and design sale later this month.

Upholstered Victorian armchairs not being the most in-demand of auction lots at present, the £100-150 estimate of a pair offered at Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium) did not seem overly pessimistic.

Music played its part in the first Dominic Winter sale of the year, with books, scores and other autograph material from another but differently sourced Elgar collection to others offered before by the saleroom.

A bustling scene of Leicester Square by genre painter Edward Prentis (1797-1854) took £6800 at David Lay (18% buyer’s premium) of Penzance.

This painting of a fire in north London drew heated bidding when it went under the hammer at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

Works on paper, not oil paintings, stole the show at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne.

More glamorous sales will take place this year, but a week of four quality auctions at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne provided some solid reassurance about the state of the middle market.

Deemed a little ostentatious in some Western circles, tiaras remain popular with the so-called ‘new’ markets.

The closing nine lots in Lawrences’ January 18 sale were consigned by a lady in Somerset. They had belonged to her mother and grandmother and had been kept in a safe deposit box in the bank for about the last 30 years.

A 17th century long-necked sealed ‘shaft and globe’ wine bottle sold for an unexpected £8300 (plus 15% buyer’s premium) at Barbara Kirk Auctions in Penzance on January 23.