South-west England

More glamorous sales will take place this year, but a week of four quality auctions at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne provided some solid reassurance about the state of the middle market.

A 17th century long-necked sealed ‘shaft and globe’ wine bottle sold for an unexpected £8300 (plus 15% buyer’s premium) at Barbara Kirk Auctions in Penzance on January 23.

A reminder of the dramatic drop in demand over recent decades for Victorian landscapes was evident in Gloucestershire where two such oils by Sidney Richard Percy (1822-86) went under the hammer.

A fragment of the flag believed to have flown from HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar came to national attention this month when it was knocked down for £240,000 at Sotheby’s.

The antiques-rich Devon town of Honiton was famed for its bobbin lacemaking since the 16th century when it was introduced by Flemish refugees.

This ‘Goliath’ carriage clock, below, was offered at Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium) in Taunton.

A classic metaphysical fantasy novel that sold poorly when first issued but later influenced the works of CS Lewis and gained many admirers, A Voyage to Arcturus is the work of David Lindsay.

Bid to a rather higher than suggested £1300 in a Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) sale of December 8 in Crewkerne were two early 19th century works on water meadows.

Four unusual collections caught the eye, if not always the cash, at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer's premium).

Two of the first sales of 2018 suggest that toasts to the future can be drunk from half-full, rather than half-empty, Georgian rummers.

Illustrated here are two of the 20 hand-coloured litho plates, many showing the Crystal Palace in the background and each with a rhyming couplet below, that make up Blondin’s Marvellous Feats.

Unsigned, but breathing the name of one of the leaders of the Arts & Crafts movement in Scotland, this enamel panel and unmarked silver brooch sold for £5500 at Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium) in Taunton.

Cockney barrow boy-related jewellery is coming to auction in Salisbury later this month.

The late Gerald and Brenda Flowerday caught the collecting bug in the late 1960s, igniting a keen interest in 18th century English ceramics that would last for the next 40 years.

A hitherto unrecorded teapot attributed to a pioneering American porcelain factory has surfaced in the UK.

Complete with slightly frayed and browned but rarely seen jacket, a 1933 copy of George Orwell’s 'Down and Out in Paris and London' was bid to £46,000 by James Hall of Lucius Books in York at a Dominic Winter sale.