South-west England

The highlight of a Cornish auction on June 10 was an RAF logbook from Battle of Britain Spitfire pilot Flying Officer Arthur Peter Pease (1913-40).

This impressive carved and painted wooden half-block model of a salmon measures an impressive 4ft 10in (1.48m) across.

A jewellery dealer with years of experience honed at Portobello, Greenwich and Covent Garden markets now owns a busy antiques shop in east Devon.

A collection of pop culture ephemera and football memorabilia found in a Cotswold bungalow was offered across 390 lots at auction.

These two oak boarded chests, made to similar techniques four centuries apart, were offered for sale recently.

A regular two-day auction of silver, art and antiques? Not at Whittons in Honiton, Devon, where the firm called its sale on June 8-9 a ‘Jubilee auction’ and auctioneer Ed Whitton donned a suitably patriotic jacket and tie to sell a good range of lots such as Georgian silver and Victorian jewellery.

Strong prices do not always have to be seven, six or even five figure sums.

Grisly figures burning at the stake reflected religious background of Staffordshire potters

In June 2008, Canterbury Auction Galleries claimed a record price for a Louis Wain ceramic when a version of the 11in (28cm) Futurist Cat in blue with Amphora factory marks sold at £8200.

Spotlight on honours sold recently includes courageous lifesavers from civilian backgrounds.

Flight Lieutenant Maurice ‘Mark’ Mounsdon was one of only four remaining members of Sir Winston Churchill’s ‘The Few’ when he died in 2019 aged 101.

Three albums containing in all some 410 wood engravings by Gwen Raverat (1885-1957), compiled by the artist as a personal record of her work and sold by a descendant, made a total of £34,500 at Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) on May 11.

A selection of Second World War ephemera with a distinctly Polish flavour estimated at £60-100 sold instead for £7600 at a Devon auction.

A woodcut by German Expressionist Max Pechstein (1881-1955) brought overseas interest to Kinghams (23% buyer’s premium) back on March 3-5.

London dealer Richard Green was the successful bidder on a Sir William Nicholson (1872- 1949) still-life sold for £440,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium).

This late 18th century portrait bust of a gentleman by a sculptor from the circle of Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823) is traditionally thought to depict the prominent British Whig statesman Charles James Fox (1749-1806).

The Our Gang range of Second World War ‘types’ were designed for the Bovey Pottery Company by architect Fenton Wyness (1903-74) and modelled by artist Gwynneth Holt (1909-95). Both were based in Aberdeen in the 1940s.

Copies of royal portraits from across the centuries are something that always seems to catch the eye when you flick through (or scroll through) the reams of pictures listed in auction catalogues.

Arguably the most famous portraits of an English king are Hans Holbein the Younger’s (c.1497-1543) depictions of Henry VIII.

Translating simply as ‘a box with drawers’ but so much more exotic than that, a rare Spanish Renaissance caja con cajones was the outstanding lot at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood’s (25% buyer’s premium) quarterly fine art sale in Exeter.