South-west England

The antiques-rich town of Honiton in Devon is famed for its bobbin lacemaking since the 16th century.

Historically the first major sale of the year, the January ‘furniture’ auction at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium) turns eyes towards Salisbury for evidence of what the next 12 months will bring.

Greenslade Taylor Hunt’s (19.5% buyer’s premium) first sale of the year got off to a bright start with a Singaporean painting sailing to £19,000.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Ephemera, photos and, remarkably, a penguin egg relating to Captain Robert Scott’s ill-fated 'Terra Nova' Expedition to the Antarctic in 1910 were eagerly contested in the room, on the phone and online at Stroud Auction Rooms’ latest sale.

The traditionally ‘dead’ period between Christmas and New Year was enlivened by the December 28 sale at Wotton Auction Rooms (17.5% buyer’s premium) in Gloucestershire – to the extent that more than 20,000 people suffering withdrawal symptoms worldwide viewed it online and 1360 of them registered to bid.

The British Art Pottery sales at Woolley & Wallis have posted some remarkable sums for single William De Morgan tiles.

The drive by, among others, the Royal Academy and the National Gallery to promote women’s importance in art would have required little effort had campaigners looked at the world of modern ceramics.

Edinburgh offers an antiques trail as does Carmarthenshire in Wales. Now it’s the turn of Ashburton, a small town in south Devon on the edge of Dartmoor with a population of 4000.

A previously unrecorded teabowl and saucer attributed to a pioneering American porcelain factory is expected to bring a six-figure sum when offered for sale in Salisbury next month.

Glass specialists Liz and Mike Flatter will be first-time exhibitors at the IACF Shepton Mallet antiques and collectors’ fair at the Bath and West Showground on Friday to Sunday, January 18-20.

Packed with a varied selection of precisely 1000 lots, a very thick catalogue rounded off one saleroom’s year in a December 11-12 sale.

Believed to have been in the same family since new, a rare 19th century Jules Steiner doll and her trunk of clothes demolished the estimate at a wide-ranging sale at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) at Crewkerne on November 16.

Believed to be unique, this grimacing stoneware dog jar and lid from the Martin Brothers pottery is up for auction at Salisbury saleroom Woolley & Wallis on December 12.

Included in the sale at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne on October 11 was a brick from the Great Wall of China. It probably dated from the Ming period when Great Wall sections were widely built with fired clay bricks, adhered with lime mortar and sticky rice.

Among the most desirable of all Royal Doulton Lambeth productions are those depicting scenes of flora and fauna from Australasia.