West Midlands

Showcase for Cotswolds dealers and guests takes place at arts and antiques exhibitions hub

Fairs are often good places to celebrity-spot and one of these sighted at the Ludlow fair was the veteran Led Zeppelin rock great, Robert Plant.

Literally the highlight of Halls’ (23% buyer’s premium) Autumn Sale was a hall lantern demonstrating showy high Victorian taste at its most confident.

Grade II-listed manor house Burton Court near Leominster, Herefordshire, is the setting for Antiques in Tents’ next fair on Friday and Saturday, October 14-15, with 50 dealers.

Proof that a traditional piece of furniture can still bring a traditional price, this mid-18th century oak tridarn went seven times above estimate at the Trevanion (20% buyer’s premium) auction in Shropshire.

This copy of 'Hansel and Gretel', 1925, with 12 tipped-in colour plates by the Danish artist Kay Nielsen (1886-1957), is one of 600 numbered copies (numbered 16) signed by the artist, in the original publisher’s pictorial cloth.

The series of novelty ‘book’ hip flasks made by James Dixon & Co of Sheffield c.1900-10 are always popular collectables.

The Silver, Coins & Medals auction at Fellows in Birmingham on September 13 will include this garniture of three George V silver pedestal bowls with lion and serpent embellishments. estimated at £1500-2500.

Two sporting ‘firsts’ are being marked by lots coming up in separate auctions this month.

Aboriginal shields come in two basic types: broad shields used for deflecting projectiles and the narrow, compact parrying shields used in close contact fighting.

Organised by Tricorn Fairs, the biannual Bristol Fine Antique Arms Fair returns on Sunday, September 11, at a new venue: the Aztec West Hotel and Spa.

Percy Thomas Tibbles, born in Hampstead, London, in 1881, was destined to become famous for cutting women in half.

Priced on the cover at nine pence, it was a British copy of a Marvel comic of 1983, one that saw the first appearance of the mighty Thor, that led the bidding at £6300 in the comics section of a July 21-22 sale held by Fieldings (24% buyer’s premium).

A brand-new building on the Dodwell Trading Estate outside Stratford-upon- Avon is the home of the recently opened Top Dog Antiques.

This cased pair of English flintlock duelling pistols by Joseph Gulley, London, c.1810-15, sold for £8600 at Halls (20/12% buyer’s premium) in a timed online sale that ended on August 2.

Overseas interest in tribal art and Doulton Lambeth wares fuelled the higher prices at Cuttlestones’ (20% buyer’s premium) Penkridge sale but it was a new outbreak of cardomania which raised temperatures of collectors across England.

“Dealers are coming from far and wide including Yorkshire, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Gloucestershire and of course Worcestershire and the West Midlands in general,” says Paul Rowson, who in May launched his new antiques and collectors’ fair in the atmospheric setting of Hartlebury Castle in Worcester, known as the Bishops’ Palace.

This sealed and dated onion in olive green glass, below, comes with a handwritten scrap of paper inscribed 'George found [this bottle] when he dived into the Thames at Windsor'. The seal reads 'S Slater 1710'.

“Analogous to the Tunbridge ware but of a superior character” was Robert Russell’s description of his work at the 1851 Great Exhibition.

A new record for a Royal Doulton figure has been set in Stoke-on-Trent.