South-west England

IF pearls reached the peak of their popularity in antiquity, when the Roman general Vitellius is said to have financed an entire military campaign by selling just one of his mother’s pearl earrings, then the market in 2012 does not rest too far behind.

THE first corkscrew model designed by Robert Jones and Son of Cheapside, Birmingham in 1840, distinctive for a narrow barrel and a single spike, can usually be bought for around £1000.

ENTERED for sale by a descendent of the family for whom it was made, this carved wood and painted plaster model of an East End butcher’s shop sold for £22,000 at Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury.

A DEVON auctioneer has issued a warning after seeing off fraudsters who tried to con him out of thousands of pounds worth of jewellery and silver through phone bids.

FOUR people will appear in court next month in connection with a series of frauds involving foreign-based credit cards used to pay for high-value jewellery at a number of auction houses.

TV presenters and antiques champions Kirstie Allsopp and Mark Hill announced the winners of the inaugural Britain’s Best Antiques Shops Awards at the Bath Decorative & Antiques Fair on March 8.

The latest sale at Duke’s of Dorchester included this 16in (41cm) wide French chinoiserie ormolu and lacquered bronze mantel clock c.1750.

This signed William Scott (1913-89) lithograph of Mousehole harbour in Cornwall was spotted during a furniture valuation before being entered into Chorley’s latest sale in Prinknash Abbey Park, Gloucestershire.

CLIVE Stewart-Lockhart, deputy chairman of Dreweatts, is to become managing director of Woolley and Wallis, the Salisbury-based salerooms.

AT Waterloo, Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) is supposed to have directed the battle from a position near the crossroads of the Brussels and Ohain roads.

A 19th century brass lectern stolen from a church in Wiltshire has emerged at an antiques fair in Romania.

Moorcroft Boy recorded one of the great comebacks in racing history when he recovered from a horrific injury at Aintree in 1995 to win the Scottish National the following year.

RAMRAIDERS have smashed their way into the Court Barn Museum, home to the Guild of Handicrafts collection, and stolen unique pieces of silver.

SETTING a house record at Cotswolds saleroom Tayler & Fletcher and helping them to their highest ever sale total, this small and previously unrecorded portrait by Anders Zorn (1860-1920), fetched £82,000 in Cheltenham.

THE final lot of 233 offered at Michael Bowman's latest sale at the Chudleigh Town Hall, Devon was this limewood carving of a goose wing attributed to the Anglo-German artist Sir Hubert von Herkomer (1849-1914).

Prints by Edward Wadsworth (1889-1949) are not a common sight on the market, but the Yorkshire-born artist who became a leading exponent of Vorticism was a prominent printmaker in the early stage of his career.

POLICE are appealing for help after 27 Chinese works of art were stolen from Stroud Auction Rooms in Gloucestershire a day before they were due to be sold.

DETECTIVE work by a Cornish auctioneer has led to a jail sentence for a 40-year-old former art teacher who defrauded galleries and members of the public by selling fakes.

MADE in 17th century Gdansk or Königsberg at the very height of the amber working trade in Europe, this delicate chalice with silver-gilt mounts shot to £210,000 at Lawrences latest sale in Crewkerne, Somerset.

THE existence of the elephant – “nature’s great masterpiece... the only harmless great thing”, to use John Donne’s famous description – was well known to medieval Europeans, but captive pachyderms had disappeared from the continent shortly after the demise of the Roman Empire.