West Midlands

Golf tournament programmes in Mullock’s (19% buyer’s premium) sale of golf and other sporting memorabilia of October 18-19 included the one shown here, issued for the 1933 Ryder Cup, played on the Southport and Ainsdale courses in 1937.

If Julia Brisbane, organiser of Antiques in Tents, ever wanted a publicist for her biannual traditional and decorative antiques fairs at Burton Court, near Leominster, she need look no further than one of her exhibitors, decorative dealer Kieran Mathewson.

In our continuing series looking through the keyhole of ‘bricks and mortar’ shops in 2017, ATG talks to Nigel Bate who opened Bridgnorth Antique Centre earlier this year.

Richard Allen is a name few in the portrait miniatures market would fail to know.

About a month ago, collector Robert Mulraine launched a website dedicated to the artist Thomas Baker of Leamington (1808-1869). A great enthusiast of the Victorian landscape painter, he has been working with the curatorial team of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to create an online ‘Memoranda of Pictures’ based on the artist’s five diaries in the museum’s collection.

Fieldings of Stourbridge set a new house record earlier this month when Emanuele Caroni’s (1826-76) marble sculpture of cupid taming the lion sold at £91,000 (plus 24% premium).

Called shuttles, but a world away from Blake’s dark satanic mills, the two sewing tools illustrated here were hand tools used by elegant ladies doing polite tatting work. The use of luxury materials was designed to reflect their status.

One of the less commonly known facts about Sir John Bernard Partridge (1861-1945), the lead cartoonist at Punch magazine, was that he had a spell as an actor in his youth.

Fieldings’ picture consultant William Lacey said he could remember a time 30 years ago when works by Wigan artist James Lawrence Isherwood (1917-89) could be bought for £30-40.

The sale at Fellows (23/15% buyer’s premium) in Birmingham on July 31 included this Arts & Crafts pendant designed by Charles Robert Ashbee (1862-1942).

The Grade II-listed Wordsley Manor has an unusual aspect – it lies in the middle of a sprawling 20th century housing estate.

Warwick arms and armour dealer Runjeet Singh will have a representative at the new Olympia fair (see separate story) but he has a ‘fixture clash’ to cope with. The west London show coincides with his first exhibition in Asia.

Large numbers of lots identified only as folders, boxes and albums full of prints, watercolours, maps and so on offered in a Brightwells (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale of July 5 included one disarmingly catalogued, in full, as ‘Sketches, Watercolours, Prints of Naked Ladies, chiefly’. It sold at £500.

Triple lens or Triunial magic lanterns were the iPhone 8 of their day. Since the days of the Sturm lantern in the 17th century, the technology had developed from basic projectors producing small, dimly lit images, to these magnificent machines capable of spectacular technicolour lantern entertainments.

A large Qing blue and white bottle vase with a Yongzheng (1723-35) mark sold for £150,000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium) at Halls in Shrewsbury.

This shagreen, silver and enamel cigarette box and cover, made for Liberty and Co and attributed to Manx designer Archibald Knox (1854-1933), doubled its estimate to sell for £10,500 at Halls (20% buyer’s premium) in Shrewsbury on June 21.