South-west England

As well as 150 inside stands and up to a few hundred outside, plenty more is in the mix at the Antique Fairs Cornwall event over the August Bank Holiday weekend at the Wadebridge Showground in north Cornwall.

The monthly Bath Vintage & Antiques Market at the city’s listed Victorian Green Park Station is now in its seventh year.

A major collection of late 19th and early 20th century jewellery amassed by a Buckinghamshire collector over half a century will come to auction this autumn.

A selection of highlights from the Chorley's auction on July 24-25 and the Tennants sale on July 21 (also see main Auction Reports story this edition).

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.

Sold for £2500 in a Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) sale of July 25 was an enormous archive of work produced in the 1950s and ‘60s by Leslie Starke (1905-74), a cartoonist once very popular in both the UK and US.

Private bidders were overtaken as dealers found warmth in the best traditional furniture and chattels offered at auction.

Cirencester saleroom Moore Allen & Innocent (20% buyer’s premium) enjoyed a taste of India’s fast-growing art market when three pictures by the Indian folk artist Jamini Roy (1887-1972) were scooped up for a total of £24,500.

It’s a rare sale these days at which an English furniture standard challenges quality Chinese pieces for price, but the top end of the trade certainly rated a 6ft 3in (1.9m) William and Mary walnut and featherbanded bureau cabinet offered by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

Two French corkscrews were the top lots of Henry Aldridge & Son’s auction of the first tranche of a single-owner collection of around 450 examples.

A very suitable buyer emerged for an 19th century picture of The Artists Rifles by John Evan Hodgson (1831-95) offered in Exeter.

Demand for Scottish artist with a ‘distinctive personality’ drives a good auction result in Somerset.