Collectables

This double-page engraved chart is from an early-17th century pilot book which is another of the highlights from the Mopelia Collection of atlases and travel books offered in London.

The name Marklin always suggested an O gauge loco and tender offered at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) would find a buyer against a £200-300 estimate but there was a considerably greater head of steam when international collectors looked closer.

Lyon & Turnbull’s African & Oceanic Art & Antiquities auction in Edinburgh on October 16 includes this Apulian-Corinthian helmet from the late 5th-early 4th century BC.

This map of Milan will feature in the sale of books and manuscripts to be held in the city by Il Ponte on September 24.

Huge York event includes a mobile installation on bird theme.

An archive relating to a once famous Suffolk dynasty comes for sale at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet on September 10-11. The diaries, journals and letters of Lady Ann Cullum (1807-75) of Hardwick House near Bury St Edmunds form part of a Fine Interiors sale.

Useful buys if you want to know how to ‘pott a Swan’, ‘fry Harticholk’ or even ‘stew Lettice’

Among a number of finely bound works offered in a July 4, Cambridge sale were three family owned examples of the work of Captain Charles Elsden Gladstone (1855-1919), a retired Royal Navy officer.

In stark contrast to the elegant dolls’ houses which took the higher bids at a recent auction (ATG No 2403), a shillelagh was evidence of violence and tragedy in 19th century Ireland.

“The wayfarer, as he reached him, saluted with a gesture of courtesy that had something foreign about it”.

A complete set of plans showing what was once the world’s largest industrial complex and the British state’s single biggest investment has sold in Cornwall. Thomas Milton’s plans of the Royal Dockyards sold to an online buyer for £10,000 (plus 18% buyer’s premium) at David Lay's latest sale in Penzance.

Relatively few English spinets from the 17th century survive but one surfaced at a Criterion auction in Islington. Loosely catalogued and estimated at just £100-200, it made £5500 (plus premium).

The reason that an otherwise unexceptional 1737 English language edition of Horace’s 'Odes, Satyrs and Epistles' – lacking a portrait and three text pages – sold for the substantial sum of £50,000 in the Bonhams (27.5/25/20/13.9%) sale on June 26 is to be found on the front endpaper notes shown below.

Two rare pre-war Dinky trade boxes which had been in loft storage for two generations appeared for sale in Lincolnshire. Toy specialist M&M Auctions (21.6% buyer’s premium inc VAT) in Spalding offered them on behalf of a family who had owned the toys since new in the mid-1930s.

From the height of almost impractical luxury to a simple piece of homespun craftsmanship, the full creative range of sewing accessories was on offer at the summer sale of specialist auction house Bleasdales (20% buyer’s premium).

An exceptional 11-lot group of the works of James Sowerby featured in a Swedish summer sale.

'Versuche über Pflanzen Hybriden' by Gregor Mendel is a paper that marked the foundation of the science of genetics.

A group of 481 rare book lots from the personal collection of renowned collector in the New York literary community features in Heritage Auctions’ rare books sale on September 5.