Collectables

Our regular listing of books and works and paper sales

This 19th century French ‘tea drinker’ automaton emerged as part of a single-owner sale at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) of Dorchester.

‘Settle bindings’ are the name given to a small number of surviving books published between c.1700-23 by Elkanah Settle (1648-1724).

This 1949-51 Massey Ferguson demonstration model by Mills Models of Sheffield comprises Ferguson TE-20 tractor with clockwork mechanism, two different ploughs, rubber wheels and Ferguson badge to front of the grill.

Nine years after taking a premium-inclusive £1375 as part of the The Robert White Collection sale at Bonhams, this Pastilles Valda shop display sales automaton came back to the same auction house in London.

Tether car racing, which began in 1930s California, sounds a strange concept to modern ears but is in fact a hobby still going strong worldwide*.

Some of the earliest dolls’ houses are also referred to as baby houses, although they were more like detailed miniature houses and it is said that the aim was not play but to reflect riches.

Our regular listing of books and works and paper sales

A round up selling exhibitions and dealer news from the UK and Europe

The books sale at Koller (25% buyer’s premium) in Zurich on September 17 was topped at SwFr250,000 (£237,250) by a first edition of the book Einstein described as “perhaps the greatest intellectual stride that it has ever been granted to any man to make”.

A musket ball-riddled handkerchief of a Royal Navy captain cut down at the Battle of Trafalgar stood out at a London sale, but it was a letter to his eight-year-old daughter also retrieved from his pocket that added a particularly poignant touch.

A round-up of art and antiques news from the previous seven days, including a Ferdinand III (1608-57) 100 ducat gold making a record sum

Influential scientific papers were originally bought by library after a bequest from a local surgeon

An extensive selection of Beatles memorabilia sold by Propstore (26% buyer’s premium) on October 23 included a 1963 poster promoting their first tour outside the UK.

Comic Book Auctions' current timed online sale ending on November 23 includes the first Star Wars poster from 1977.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper sales

The artist Margaret Bartels (1887-1932), who trained at the Camberwell School of Art, came from a family of suffrage campaigners living in south London.