UK

Many sporrans are military or feral in character, but this leather wallet had graced the groin of Sir Harry Lauder, legendary laird of the music hall. Winston Churchill sounded dangerously like Samuel Johnson when he described the folk singer and comedian as “Scotland’s greatest ever ambassador”, but there is no doubt that Lauder, though dead since 1950, remains popular with tourists who swallow his sentimental vision of the old country.

THE Essex auctioneers Ambrose had hoped the unusual top lot in their 561-lot sale on 19-20 July would fetch more, but bidding on the set of ten gothic-style Victorian mahogany dining chairs was hampered by their non-commercial design.

UK: FROM October 1 – 31, to mark the 602nd anniversary of Chaucer’s death, the Gallery in the Friars, Canterbury, is holding an exhibition, entitled The Canterbury Tales.

Inherently rare – in occupied France you wouldn’t want to be caught with a copy – this flimsy sheet of propaganda issued by the maquis at the height of WWII comes up for sale at Dominic Winter Book Auctions in Swindon on August 28.

ON July 23 Bristol Auction Rooms (15% buyer’s premium) took the second highest price at auction for an oil by Hampshire artist Henry Garland (1854-1900). Back in December 1998 Bonhams Knightsbridge took a premium- inclusive £12,650 for the 3ft 4in by 5ft 7in (1.02 x 1.70m) oil Village Gossips.

THE pocket Derringer was a popular weapon for Western movie card-sharps, proving discretion could get the better of valour, but these palm-sized precursors look more lethal to the user than the intended victim.

TATTON Park in Cheshire is the National Trust’s most visited property, but not only is it the country’s favourite, it is also a big favourite of Essex organiser Robert Bailey who holds four Tatton fairs a year.

ONE of the most widely recognised furniture designs of the 20th century, Ray and Charles Eames’ reclining chair and ottoman, designed in 1956 for the film director Billy Wilder, has also been among the most mass produced. Every second-hand design shop in Britain will either stock a copy, or will tell you they have just sold one, but the recent proliferation of online warehouse retailers has stabilised the price for modern copies at around £2000.

THE private collection of the late Lake District hoteliers Brian Sack and Francis Coulston provided some choice pickings for collectors with a decorative bent but a limited budget at Thomson, Roddick and Medalf on 9 July.

PLANS are well advanced for what looks set to become the major antiques fair of Belfast and, if the pre-launch activity is anything to judge by, Antiques and Arts International will be a contender for Ireland’s top fair.

The extraordinary prices realised for football memorabilia such as the £140,000 bid at Christie’s South Kensington for Pele’s Brazilian 1970 World Cup Final shirt reflect sporting collectors’ current obsession with the beautiful game.

TIME stood still at WTM Snape’s Tea and Coffee Merchants of Queen Street, Wolverhampton. For well over a century it has been one of the best preserved old shops left in Britain – apart from the installation of electric light, and a Hobart electric coffee grinder in the 1970s, nothing much has changed in the emporium, founded in the early 19th Century.

BIG BROTHER winner Kate Lawler is rumoured to want to hold her sister’s wedding reception in the hi-tech TV house, but she may find the Hertfordshire home-from-home that was her prison for so long is a little more spartan than when she was incarcerated there…

Unfortunate timing, rather than the quality of entries or the state of the collectors’ market, was to blame for patchy interest and selective bidding in Bonham’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) 582-lot Entertainment sale on July 24, according to specialist Toby Wilson.

With tarriffs and subsidies yet again a hot political topic, it was appropriate that this wine label caused such a stir at Woolley and Wallis’ Salisbury salerooms on July 17.

THE acquisition of a unique collection of Afghan textiles has highlighted the cash crisis at the British Museum. Despite spending £34,000 on the collection, including a £26,000 grant from the National Arts Collection Fund, the BM’s ethnographic textiles collection has nowhere to display it.

This muscular terracotta modellino of a moor, Il Moro, 2ft 75/8in high (80.5cm), attributed to Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), wrested the top slot from a powerfully modelled pair of 16th century bronzes in Sotheby’s (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) 174-lot European Sculpture and Works of Art 900-1900 auction on July 9.

When David Brettell was made redundant from Barbers of Market Drayton he decided to go it alone and in October 2001 Brettells was born. Holding weekly general and bi-monthly fine sales, the fledgling auction house has found success in what have been difficult times for the trade.

Americans being a major force in the arcane world of tool collecting,Tony Murland and Mike Hancock feared the US recession would hit their July 27 specialist Tool Shop Auctions, 10% buyer’s premium) at Needham Market.

The compact animal carvings of the Tomotada school are rightly thought of as the zenith of shashin netsuke, and this ivory buffalo and calf, right, by the Kyoto master (or one of his pupils) attracted strong bidding from US and London trade at Bonhams’dispersal of Branton Court.