Decorative Art

The latest Homes & Interiors sale at Sworders included an extraordinary and highly personal relic from the Waterloo battlefield: a silver-mounted inkwell made from the ear of a war horse.

Battle saleroom Burstow & Hewett (20% buyer’s premium) recently sold the ‘contents of a Sussex manor house’ – the lifetime collection of a local antiques collector and dealer.

This stoneware pond by Robert Wallace Martin, measuring 6ft 6in (2m) across, comprises 40 architectural elements, each incised with fish and aquatic creatures among water weeds.

A Louis Comfort Tiffany pendant-necklace with matching ear clips in gold, star sapphire, moonstones, and enamel hammered for $200,000 (£148,000) at Doyle (28/27% buyer’s premium).

A recent sale of Modern Art & Design at Mallams (25% buyer’s premium) in Oxford included a local collection of 21 pots by John Ward (1938-2023).

A fine example of the Libertas Americana silver medal is estimated to fetch between £50,000-80,000 at Anderson & Garland’s Fine Silver and Objects of Vertu auction in Newcastle on July 22.

Almost singlehandedly, Sir Laurence Whistler (1912-2000) revived the tradition of British diamond point engraving in the post-war era. His stippled glass goblets were particularly innovative: engraved on both sides of the bowl with views of the English countryside, they create an illusion of perspective.

A rarity at a recent Woolley & Wallis (26% buyer’s premium) ceramics and glass sale was a late 18th century Wedgwood basalt intaglio seal, featuring a profile portrait of the notorious American spy Captain Nathan Hale (1755-76) beside the reversed inscription 'My Country!!!'.

Lyon & Turnbull’s (26% buyer’s premium) sale marking the centenary of the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes - the event that later gave Art Deco its name - included a Lalique glass vase that was shown at the event. Quatre Figurines Femmes Formant Soutien, standing 6½in (17cm) high and modelled as a quartet of crouching female nudes supporting an ovoid bowl, was made using the cire perdue (or lost wax) technique.

Two auctions held in the region underline demand for the locally produced ceramics

One of the rarest of all of the 31 car mascots made by Lalique from 1925-31 came up for auction at Jeffrey Evans & Associates (25% buyer’s premium) in Mount Crawford, Virginia.

A collection of ceramics by the Hanley-born pottery painter Arthur Holland (1896 1979) comes for sale at Potteries Auctions in Newcastle-under-Lyme on July 12.

Chelsea Red Anchor period ‘Hans Sloane’ plates are named with reference to the royal physician, traveller, and natural historian who helped transform the Chelsea Physic Garden into a centre of botanical knowledge during the Enlightenment.

Among the great Beilby discoveries of recent times was the emergence - from two separate sources across 14 years - of six small firing glasses decorated in red, yellow and white enamel with Masonic emblems.

Ceramics expert’s collection sold at auction included notable pieces made on Merseyside but also a Limehouse cup that proved very popular with bidders