South-west England

The market for Chinese furniture has come on leaps and bounds in 20 years.

Leading a recent Woolley & Wallis' (25/12% buyer’s premium) sale in Salisbury were two scroll paintings by well-known 20th century Chinese artists that came by descent from Field Marshal Archibald Percival Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell (1883-1950).

Christopher Dresser created a number of daring geometric designs for silver and silver-plated toast racks in the late 1870s and early 1880s, both for Hukin & Heath and for James Dixon & Son.

Many Chinese export porcelain forms were inspired by European silver or ceramic forms.

A 19th century sea otter amulet in walrus ivory and baleen fashioned as a mother and her pup sold for £24,000 at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium).

This Qing bronze fragment measuring a substantial 19in (47cm) across was once part of a magnificent sculpture of a crane that adorned an imperial palace.

Early Japanese porcelain models of animals are very rare, and this elephant form koro, c.1700, offered for sale as part of the Woolley & Wallis (25/12% buyer’s premium) Japanese works of art sale appears to be unrecorded.

The outstanding jade offered in the regions in the October-December period was this pale celadon teapot and cover that came for sale at Duke’s in Dorchester on December 8 from a Dutch private collection where it had been since the 1980s.

Brass and steel ‘combination’ or ‘puzzle’ boxes enjoyed a vogue in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

Two very different lots from a November 10 sale held by Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) are noted here.

Modern British sculptures were the main attraction at Wotton Auction Rooms’ (18% buyer’s premium) recent sale at Stouts Hill Manor.

The Tabby Cat by Mary Fedden is among the highlights in Somerset dealer Freya Mitton’s upcoming exhibition of British art.

An artist’s painting of his wife turned heads at a recent David Lay (18% buyer’s premium) auction in Penzance, selling over 10 times above estimate.

In 1946 the artist Laura Knight (1877-1970) was commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee to create a painting of the Nuremberg Trials.

Many of the unsung British heroes of both world wars served in the royal and merchant navies carrying and protecting supplies to Russia or the USSR.

On May 6, 1954 - the day British middle-distance athlete Roger Bannister (1929-2018) ran the first ever sub-four-minute mile - there were five official timekeepers plus a sixth watch manned by race commentator Norris McWhirter (1925-2004).

A copy of Richard Hakluyt’s 'The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation' takes a six-figure sum at Devon sale.

Two Banksy prints donated to charity set high prices for their respective individual editions at a Bristol auction.

This late 18th century Channel Islands silver coffee pot has marks for the Jersey silversmith Jacques Quesnel I.

The Anglo-Croatian sculptor Oscar Nemon (1906-85) first met Sir Winston Churchill when holidaying in Marrakech in 1951.