Collectables

On August 19 Pook & Pook will sell the collection of Barbara A and Fred Johnson of Rockford, Illinois, owners of Barbara A Johnson Antiques.

Thomaston Place is holding one of its extensive multi-discipline summer sale over three days from August 27-29 featuring a wide mix of American, European and Asian paintings, furnishings and objects.

By the 1980s toy action figures were shrinking in size from GI Joe and Action Man proportions to the likes of Action Force and Star Wars.

A richly illuminated leaf from a late 15th century manuscript account of the life of St Catherine sold at a high-estimate £30,000 at Bloomsbury Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

A tinplate model of the Alfa Romeo P2 sped past a £500-1000 estimate to take £4600 at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) auction in Dorchester.

Armenian manuscript demolishes estimate to take six figures in London saleroom

Among the medal groups that impressed at Dix Noonan Webb's July 21 auction was one awarded to a famous recipient: RAF Group Captain Peter Townsend.

On a single day in 1919 the Imperial German Navy achieved the impressive feat of sinking 52 vessels. Unfortunately, they were its own ships.

The organisers of the Bamberger Kunst-und Antiquitätenwochen (art and antiques weeks), which run until August 22, thought long and hard about whether to hold this year’s event in light of the pandemic.

An update from Jeremy Carson, organiser of PBFA’s Brighton Book Fair which will run at Brighton Racecourse (assuming it is not being used as a vaccination centre then…) on Saturday, October 30 – the first in Brighton for more than 20 years.

Edition marked the first time a person of African descent had work published

A small fragment of a significant airship comes up for auction at Spicers in Old Goole, East Yorkshire, to mark a tragic centenary.

Illustrated with 76 hand-coloured flags, a 1794 Signal Book for the Ships of the Line sold to an online bidder for £11,000 in a Shrewsbury sale.

This 15th century copy of the Life of St Radegund is an illuminated biography of the canonised sixth-century Frankish queen Radegund.

The Galloways were a distinguished Victorian military family, as a number of items sold at Bishop & Miller (22% buyer’s premium) revealed.

Cheffins’ auction in Cambridge on August 26 includes a silver presentation salver given to Air Vice Marshal James Edgar ‘Johnnie’ Johnson (1915-2001), the highest-scoring Western Allied pilot against the Luftwaffe and the RAF’s officially recognised top-scoring fighter pilot of the Second World War.

An intriguing condition report that mentions ‘water and smoke damage’ gives a clue as to what happened to this battered copy of the Encyclopedia Britannia sold in a Charles Miller (24% buyer’s premium) auction.

A new high for a British army Victoria Cross as 'exceptional’ example also sets a house record for a medal at Dix Noonan Webb

This impressive Baroque chess set by the Danzig amber artist Michel Redlin has returned to the city of Gdansk in Poland where it was made over 300 years ago.