South-west England

A coveted lot from the silver sale at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury on July 17 was an Edwardian Drew’s ‘Patent and Registered’ En Route picnic basket.

Chosen as the front-cover illustration to Paul Atterbury and John Benjamin’s 'The Jewellery and Silver of HG Murphy' (2005), this gemset pendant also provided Woolley & Wallis’ latest Jewellery and Watches sale with its showcase lot.

This set of three tubeline tiles featuring polychrome birds in a grassland setting, is one of the many pieces on offer at The Cotswolds Decorative, Antiques & Art Fair at Westonbirt School.

While good-quality but familiar Georgian silver such as entrée dishes, tureens and sauceboats estimated in the £6000-12,000 range met stiff resistance at Dorchester auction house Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) on June 28, two top-quality pieces made their money.

Auction houses in Bristol, Staffordshire and Norfolk have chosen to invest in new premises this year. Suggesting continued confidence in the regional auction market, Bristol Auction Rooms, Potteries Auctions and TW Gaze are planning to open new salerooms by the autumn.

Considering that Norwich was, after London, the largest and wealthiest city in England from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, its assay office (1562-1705) was comparatively shortlived. As such, secular silver produced in the city rarely appears on the market.

Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium) is currently selling across a number of auctions a cache of items from the family of HG Murphy (1884-1939), whose Falcon Studio produced some of the finest English silver of the inter-war era.

The Royal Horticultural Society’s 65-acre gardens in a north Devon valley form the fragrant floral backdrop for Devon County Antiques Fairs’ quarterly two-day antiques and collectors’ events.

A collection of more than 400 corkscrews assembled over 40 years by an “old-school connoisseur” is to be auctioned at Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

This Tudor period gold finger ring with the initials RB was found by a detectorist on land to the west of Crewkerne in 2017.

Woolley & Wallis is currently selling across a number of sales a cache of items from the family of HG Murphy (1884-1939), whose Falcon Studio produced some of the finest English silver of the inter-war era.

An inscription reading “For Mrs Oliver, from Beatrix Potter – with kind regards & best wishes for Christmas 1901” was a welcome bonus on a copy of the first, privately printed edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

From her Dorset cottage, artist and print-maker Rena Gardiner (1929-99) produced more than 40 guidebooks to historic places, buildings and the countryside, all of which she wrote, illustrated with drawings made directly onto litho plates and printed herself.

In our continuing series looking through the keyhole of ‘bricks and mortar’ shops and centres, ATG talks to Richard Payne- Withers, who runs Bridport Antiques with his wife Samantha.