Penzance

Consignments from vendors with a close connection to famous artists are always a welcome boon for any auction.

Topaz in its natural state is a golden brown to yellow, a characteristic which means it is sometimes confused with the less valuable gemstone citrine.

David Lay’s (18% buyer's premium) second stand-alone Asian art sale held in Penzance was topped at £65,500 (estimate £3000-5000) by this shodana made in Meiji period Japan, c.1890.

A collection of vintage travel posters included a number with the added advantage of local appeal when offered by Penzance auction house David Lay (18% buyer’s premium).

In a large collection of fountain pens offered at Cornish auction house Barbara Kirk (15% buyer’s premium) most well-known makers were represented, but among the rarer ones were no fewer than 19 by the Italian manufacturer Omas.

When this portrait of a young woman was first exhibited in the early 1930s, critics remarked on its “intensity and vital quality”, “the charming head” and the “wonderful life-like expression”.

A complete set of plans showing what was once the world’s largest industrial complex and the British state’s single biggest investment has sold in Cornwall. Thomas Milton’s plans of the Royal Dockyards sold to an online buyer for £10,000 (plus 18% buyer’s premium) at David Lay's latest sale in Penzance.

Under forthcoming UK ivory legislation, there will be no legitimate market for bronze and ivory Art Deco figures.

Penzance auction house David Lay (18% buyer’s premium) is no stranger to the great Chinese boom but in July it staged Cornwall’s first dedicated Asian sale.

The story of Cornish care worker Jordan Rogers, who proved he was the illegitimate son and legitimate heir to a £50m Penrose mansion, made national headlines in May. It also had a knock-on effect in the auctioneering world.

A portrait by John Opie (1761-1807) led nearly two dozen family portraits from the historic Penrose Estate in Porthleven, Cornwall, at local Penzance saleroom David Lay (18% buyer’s premium) on May 2.

More homely than the material being produced in Scandinavia and France, the adzed oak furniture first made by Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson in the 1920s-30s was, nevertheless, a distinctive genre.

Illustrated with eight hand-coloured litho plates, each with moveable flaps, The Puppy’s Visit To His Friends was issued as one of EC Bennett’s moveable books, probably in the 1850s.

A rare Longines centre seconds military wristwatch – a type developed in 1944 for the rigours of airborne work by the Research & Development team of the War Department – sold for a multi-estimate £11,200 at Barbara Kirk (15% buyer’s premium) in Penzance on November 27 last year.

Edwin Harris (1855-1906) is one name that did not feature in the Robin Hanbury-Tenison collection of Newlyn School art at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (see main story in this section).

In a worn but period calf binding, a 1697 first of John Evelyn’s Numismata. A Discourse of Medals… made £350 in the book section of a recent Cornish auction.

From 1936-45, St Ives artist John Wells (1907-2000) embarked on a series of labour-intensive creations while working as a GP on the Isles of Scilly.

Early children’s books, many from a single collection formed by the late Mary Joy Sanger, provided a principal attraction in a February 27 sale held in Penzance by David Lay (18% buyer’s premium).