Gloucestershire

Michael Faraday’s laboratory notebook from 1851 includes a series of diagrams illustrating what he called ‘magnetic lines of force’ – the magnetic field lines that are central to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.

The Chinese carved wooden statue pictured below is one of the offerings at the January Cotswolds Decorative Antiques & Art Fair, where the selection of Asian art is set to be wide and varied.

A spate of early to mid-20th century portraits of society figures and important personalities generated stiff competition at UK sales in London and the regions.

Differing echoes of the First World War attracted bidders at Dominic Winter’s (20% buyer’s premium) Cirencester auction in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday.

Bid to £32,000 in a Gloucestershire auction was a 1599, first Latin edition of the Dutch traveller and explorer, Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s Navigatio ac itinerarium…

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

A group of “historically important” watercolour and pencil drawings of the London Blitz sparked a bidding war at Cirencester saleroom Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium).

Robert Hillingford (1826-1904) was a Victorian painter of historical scenes, whose subjects included the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon, as well as scenes taken from Shakespearean plays.

The growing demand in recent years to own pictures by women artists has brought this long-overlooked area of the art market to the fore. In an auction at Cirencester auction house Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) two works by women painters stood out.

Sold for a record $2750 (£2220) at PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) in California on October 10 was an inscribed copy of The World Set Free, a prophetic novel by HG Wells.

First work in photographer’s classic coverage of China and its people makes £48,000.

A buoyant specialist subject in its own right, studio pottery appeared at a number of the recent Design sales with material by major British names selling in the expected low four-figure range.

A sale devoted to Military and Aviation History at Dominic Winter in South Cerney on November 7 includes a rare invitation ticket c.1913 to witness the first man to ‘loop-the-loop’ in a live demonstration at Brooklands Automobile Racing Club.

Tom Mason’s collecting bug began when his father sent him postcards and gifts from places where he was posted during the Second World War. By his early teens he had started his own collection of military memorabilia and began what would become a lifetime obsession with the American Civil War. Pen pals in the US and Canada helped him search for relics.

‘Grolieresque’ cover on 1527 edition of key Italian Renaissance work boosts auction value.

Shown below are the frontispiece and title-page of Newes from the East-Indies..., a 1638 account by William Bruton of his travels in ‘Bengalla’.

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.