Gloucestershire

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.

Christopher Jones specialises in 18th, 19th and 20th century decorative antiques, furniture, lighting and porcelain. He next stands at the Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair in Battersea from October 1-6.

A gold, jade and rock crystal model of a sedan chair by Fabergé was hammered down at £380,000 last week – a new house record for a Gloucestershire auctioneer.

One of the star turns in the summer sale in South Cerney of Martin Orsky’s wonderful library emerged towards the end of the day. This was a uniformly framed set of five stencil coloured woodcut broadsides, heightened with bodycolour and glitter and representing ‘The Five Senses’, sold at £30,000.

Entry card for 1823 auction sells in Gloucestershire saleroom nearly 200 years later

Japanese carved ivories of a tiger and an elephant soared far above estimate at Chorley’s (22% buyer’s premium).

An exhibition of 18th and 19th century Indian mica pictures is a stand-out offering at a new arts festival in the Cotswolds.

Useful buys if you want to know how to ‘pott a Swan’, ‘fry Harticholk’ or even ‘stew Lettice’

The dealers of Tetbury who trade with the Continent are determined to work through whatever turbulence Brexit may bring. A no-deal departure, likely to result in tariffs and customs checks, would present problems for import and export of stock.

ATG explores Tetbury’s Long Street to discover dealers evolving to lure casual buyers as well as connoisseurs

A 19th century plaster bust of Napoleon was among sales at the recent Cotswold Decorative Antiques & Art Fair, which takes place in Westonbirt School near Tetbury three times a year.

A copy of 'The Island of Adventure' offered in a Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) sale of June 19-20 sold for £360 – just £10 short of the auction record set for a copy it had offered back in 2006.