Exeter

Chinese trick or surprise cups were made to deceive a drinker and illustrate the classical paradigm that modesty brings gain and arrogance results in loss.

Walter Sickert and Winifred Nicholson feature in Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood's picture sale.

Naive-style Cornish art has been on a good run at regional auctions over recent months.

Bid to a far higher than predicted £1000 in a recent West Country sale was a broadside whose lengthy title read: 'Life, Trial, and Execution of T.Cooper. Who was executed at Newgate this Morning for the Murder of Timothy Daly, a Policeman, at Highbury.'

“It’s been heart-breaking to keep cancelling fairs as people are so keen to trade but the good news is that our event in the Westpoint Arena at the Devon Showground, Exeter, is going ahead on Saturday and Sunday, June 5-6,” says Nick Bayliss of Continuity Fairs.

Memorabilia relating to members of a pioneering elite group of female pilots who flew in the Second World War soared over estimates at two auction houses.

This Zenith chronometer dating from c.1954 is powered by a calibre 135 movement which is widely considered to be the most elegant manual wind movement ever made.

Two traditional drinking vessels brought surprising toasts to European craftsmen at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (23% buyer’s premium) in Exeter.

Collected by a Scottish enthusiast, 26 railway station totems – the enamel signs introduced across the UK by newly nationalised British Rail in 1948 – gained UK-wide interest at McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium) in Glasgow.

This spiral-moulded cream jug decorated with a drummer boy is from a well-documented Caughley tea and coffee service painted with figural subjects by Fidelle Duvivier during a brief period of work at the Chamberlain factory in Worcester in October 1792.

Essay warns about considerable perils of the ‘indecent custom’ of burials in churchyards

A First World War medal fashioned from a Mexican eight reales coin was an unusual feature of a group sold at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (23% buyer’s premium) on February 19.

This 18th century English provincial school full-length portrait depicts the jester Black John. He was in the employ of the famously eccentric John Arscott (1718-88) of the Tetcott estate in Devon, said to be the last man in England to keep a professional jester.

With an Irish silver ‘seal salver’ gleaming at the first Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (23% buyer’s premium) sale of the year (ATG No 2427), Italy, China and Russia provided other highlights.

On the death of the monarch, or when a statesman left office, it was required by law that any seals of royal authority be broken and defaced.

A bid of £5000 from a Contemporary art gallery in London secured this post-war portrait by the writer and Vorticist painter Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957).

Run by Devon County Antiques Fairs for many years, the renamed monthly Saturday Exeter Matford Antiques and Collectors’ Fair was taken over by SP Fairs, aka Sue Ede and family, last year.

A flurry of bids emerged for this late-17th century canine study at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood of Exeter (23% buyer’s premium).

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.