Gloucestershire

It looks very tatty, but the dust jacket shown below is apparently a rare variant featuring a classic 1937 design by Alex Jardine for a 1927 first ‘Coronation’ edition of the Café Royal Cocktail Book.

Cirencester auction house Moore Allen & Innocent will offer a cache of uncensored letters written by a prominent First World War officer.

Last month, Britain’s oldest postcard publisher, J Salmon, announced it was closing after almost 140 years of business. Blamed for its demise was the rise of selfies and social media.

The final 2017 edition of the Cotswolds Decorative Antiques & Art Fair takes place from October 27-29 in Westonbirt School, Gloucestershire.

A single-owner collection focusing on the polar regions was a notable feature of the travel section of the October 4 sale held by Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium). It included, at a 10-times estimate £3000, the posthumously published Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph Rene Bellot.

Cheap sterling can help bring in the foreign buyers – but only if auctioneers can deliver the right goods. These were much in evidence at Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) sale at Prinknash Abbey on September 13-14.

Maltese furniture commands a premium – and not simply because it appeals to a committed group of island collectors.

In recent years Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) has enjoyed considerable success with cookery manuscripts and the most recent auction further enhanced the saleroom’s recipe for culinary success.

Militaria has the advantage of a wide price range for items. A photograph sold in Cirencester on July 7 was a good example of ‘more affordable’ levels.

Tattooed from head to foot, this ‘Native of Nukahiva’ (in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia) features on one of the two frontispieces and a folding chart that form the illustrative content of the 1813, first English edition of Adam von Krusenstern’s 1803-06 Voyage round the World…

Naïve-style paintings of livestock remain one of the liveliest sectors of the 19th century pictures market, judging by the response to several examples offered in Gloucestershire.

‘L’Abbé Quille’ (shown below), against whose leg a dog is seen relieving itself in the illustration, is one of 84 hand-coloured plates – 12 each of seven subjects – that make up a French magic trick book of c.1799 sold for £2900 by Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) in a June 19-20 sale.

Handsomely bound, a set of Gould’s Birds of Britain offered as part of the small but select Dorros ornithological library at Christie’s New York sale of June 15 failed against a $60,000-80,000 estimate, but in a Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) sale of the previous day a very differently presented set brought a mid-estimate £36,000.

Thieves in Chipping Campden have struck at the core of the Court Barn Museum’s collection of Arts & Crafts silver and jewellery.