Auctioneers

What am I bid for this cuppa and slice of cake?

This handsome Georgian mahogany silver or china table soared above expectations at an auction in the Channel Islands.

A spectacular Victorian silver fox modelled by taxidermist James Rowland Ward sold for £100,000 at Tennants on November 16.

An eight-page account of the famous football match played on Christmas Day in the First World War during an unofficial truce was a highlight of a remarkable album compiled by Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurse Maude Alice Lineham (1883-1967).

A recent sale at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (26% buyer’s premium) in Exeter included a late 15th century Italian manuscript that is thought to be a codex unicus.

A pair of pistols that were presented by Napoleon just six weeks after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo are on offer in Thomas Del Mar’s sale of Fine Antique Arms, Armour & Militaria on December 4.

While the buying audience still loves its brand names and big stones, jewellery with a narrative is a strength of the market

Booming regional auction house points to experience and contacts as key to source high calibre works

Former Masterpiece fair chairman was particularly enthusiastic about antiquities

John Wallis was one of the leading publishers of board games in the early 19th century. One of them, Science in Sport, or the Pleasures of Astronomy, was first issued in 1804 and revised in 1815.

The French-American sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) started making jewellery in the early 1970s after she was introduced to the Italian goldsmith Giancarlo Montebello in Paris.