Collectables

Sold online at £5500 in a February 2 sale held by Catherine Southon (24% buyer’s premium) at Farleigh Court Golf Club in Surrey was a copy in full mottled calf gilt of the first European edition of the works of Confucius (551-479BC).

Venetian edition of Commedia, lunar map and account of Polar voyages surface in Milan.

This 1930s pencil and gouache for the Lawn Tennis Championship Meetings was a poster design for London Underground.

News earlier this month of the discovery of Endurance, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s expedition ship, in the icy waters of the Weddell Sea in Antarctica, will surely have made the hearts of dealers and collectors of polar material beat a little faster.

During the 19th century visitors seeking out idyllic lakeland views caused a mild tourist boom in the southwest corner of Ireland.

Our regular listing of upcoming British and Irish book sales.

An Anglo-Saxon gold shilling or thrymsa dating from 650- 670AD took £15,000 at Dix Noonan Webb in Mayfair.

Anonymous complete edition from 1696-97 is now recognised as the work of Mary Astell

RAF Wing Commander Terence Helfer’s Distinguished Flying Cross citation stated: “He has undertaken many hazardous missions…”

The most cherished coin from the reign of Victoria proved popular at a German saleroom

The only known blueprint of a Great War British Mark I tank has been sold by Carlisle auction house Laidlaw (18.5% buyer’s premium) to The Tank Museum in Bovington.

The healthy demand for top-notch medals with interesting back-stories shows no sign of decreasing, judging by recent results.

David Jeffcoat (1945-2020) was a man with many interests, not least setting up dining clubs such as the Lunardi Society celebrating the achievements of a hot air balloonist and another named after a local vicar turned highwayman.

The Voluntary Aid Detachments (VAD) comprised volunteer civilians providing care to British, Empire and allied troops during the First World War, both in field hospitals near to the battlefield and in more established places of recuperation back home.

Kathleen Lynn can be seen very much as a modern woman of her time. The daughter of a County Mayo Church of Ireland rector, her upbringing was conservatively Protestant and Unionist but she became politically radicalised through her exposure to the poverty of Dublin’s slums while she studied medicine.

If a full-size Victoria Cross medal group is beyond your price range, a lot sold at Adam Partridge (20% buyer’s premium inc VAT) is perhaps the next best thing.

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Although the French inventor Charles-Xavier Thomas de Colmar introduced the first model of his calculating machine Arithmomètre in 1820, he waited some 30 years before he started producing them in series.

Formed by a local man, the late Brian Ferguson, a collection of over 40 books issued by the Golden Cockerel Press featured in an auction held by Thomson Roddick (18% buyer’s premium) of Carlisle.