South-west England

Focus on two shops launched in a former bank in Wiltshire and restaurant in Cumbria

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.

A spate of early to mid-20th century portraits of society figures and important personalities generated stiff competition at UK sales in London and the regions.

Nick Bayliss of Continuity Fairs is launching a new biannual antiques, home and vintage fair at Bath Racecourse, the UK’s highest flat racecourse.

Included among more than 70 paintings and prints offered at Dorset saleroom Clarke’s Auctions (18% buyer’s premium) was this uncharacteristic Joseph Farquharson (1846-1935) oil of the artist’s garden in Aberdeenshire.

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”.

IACF has announced a change to the three-day antiques and collectors’ fairs held in Shepton Mallet at the Royal Bath and West Showground five times a year.

Invented in the 19th century but outmoded by word processors then computers, typewriters are now having a resurgence in the collecting world.

Less often seen than Suffragette propaganda and considerably less PC these days, a brass and enamel fob badge for the National League for Opposing Woman had its international admirers at Ipswich auction house Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium).

Run by Devon County Antiques Fairs for many years, the renamed monthly Saturday Exeter Matford Antiques and Collectors’ Fair was taken over by SP Fairs, aka Sue Ede and family, last year.

Albert Moulton Foweraker’s (1873-1942) main interest as a watercolourist was the effect of blue moonlight on the landscape.

Differing echoes of the First World War attracted bidders at Dominic Winter’s (20% buyer’s premium) Cirencester auction in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday.

Bid to £32,000 in a Gloucestershire auction was a 1599, first Latin edition of the Dutch traveller and explorer, Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s Navigatio ac itinerarium…

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

The huge and ongoing task of cataloguing thousands of cigarette cards and other ephemera from a deceased collector’s home – he had walls pasted with beer mats instead of wallpaper – paid off for Bristol auctioneer Gavin Aplin.

A group of “historically important” watercolour and pencil drawings of the London Blitz sparked a bidding war at Cirencester saleroom Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium).

Even during his lifetime Edward William Godwin complained that ebonised tables to his textbook ‘Anglo-Japanese’ design c.1867-68 were being copied by a number of different manufacturers.

Although the catalogue noted the rarity of a Queen Anne silver tazza and tankard having been together for more than 300 years, they were offered separately at Lawrences (25% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne.

Thirty pieces of antiquarian jewellery discovered next to a joint of meat in an old freezer were sold for £68,000 (plus 24% buyer's premum) at Kidson-Trigg near Highworth, Swindon.

Robert Hillingford (1826-1904) was a Victorian painter of historical scenes, whose subjects included the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon, as well as scenes taken from Shakespearean plays.