South-west England

The Victorian artist John Bagnold Burgess (1829- 97), grandson of a painter who counted Thomas Gainsborough among his pupils, was best known as a painter of genre scenes.

Star turn among some 120 lots of playing cards offered as part of a Stroud Auctions (18% buyer’s premium) sale was the last to be offered. A complete set of Charles Hodges’ Astronomical Playing Cards, it sold online for £3000.

Judith Howard (1945-2019), collector, part-time dealer, museum curator, author, TV expert and lecturer, was a self-confessed ‘maximalist’. Every shelf and wall space in her Wiltshire end-of-terrace was there to be filled. Dusting was a chore reserved for just one day a year.

Drawings by two later followers of the Pre-Raphaelites drew competition at separate regional salerooms.

The opening lot of the Five Centuries sale at Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium) in Edinburgh on February 5 was this previously unrecorded maiolica handled and spouted wet drug jar.

As ever, the most recent sale held by Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) contained a great many maps and atlases and shown below is one of the highlights.

An early 17th century Limoges enamel draw purse attracted a flurry of bids at Chorley’s Attic Sale in Gloucestershire. Set with period portraits of a lady on one side and a gentleman on the other, the accessory has remained intact for about 400 years – in most examples the fabric has deteriorated significantly.

Late work by the pivotal avant-garde painter belies the dark nature of earlier works

Although outwardly simple objects, cedar ‘bent corner’ chests, still made today by the indigenous people of the Pacific North West, employ a number of sophisticated woodworking techniques.

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.

Falling short of ambitious hopes but leading the day at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) first sale of 2020 was a fine English Golden Age longcase clock.

Among the gems spotted in 2092 mixed lots at Stroud Auctions’ (18% buyer’s premium) year-opener on January 8, the best-seller was the final lot.

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.

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.

This pair of silver and enamel cufflinks with the royal cypher of George VI comes in a presentation box by Plante of Bury Street, London.

Highlight literally and metaphorically of the Woolley & Wallis sale on January 8 was a pair of ormolu and hardstone-mounted candelabra, superb in themselves and packed with French royal history.

A trio of five-figure offerings got Salisbury auction house Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium) off to a great start for 2020.

Two ‘Frost Fair’ broadsides printed at one of the many stalls set up on the Thames during a hard 18th century winter in which London’s river froze over were sold in a recent sale held by Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium).