Catherine Southon

As part of a Fine Art auction in Surrey on June 25, Catherine Southon is selling a collection of British art exhibition posters from the estate of Professor Zacron (Robert Drew), the maverick artist best known for the album cover of Led Zeppelin III.

Chinese chairs smaller and less formal than the ‘yoke-back’ or ‘horseshoe-back’ armchairs are referred to as rose chairs (meiguiyi) or writing chairs (wenyi).

With the scrap price of silver at such a high level the sad truth is that many items will end up in the melting pot.

Large urban landscapes, lorry parks, shantytowns and thronging markets feature heavily in the work of Ghanian painter Ablade Glover (b.1934).

The Alfred Jewel is a famous piece of Anglo-Saxon goldsmith craftmanship, a gold-mounted piece of rock crystal enamelled with a portrait of a man and the inscription translating as ‘Alfred ordered me to be made’.

Serpent jewels, symbols of eternity and exoticism, are ever popular and two good examples are on offer this autumn.

The sale held by Catherine Southon at the Farleigh Golf Club in Surrey on April 26-27 includes a single-owner collection of 18th century drinking glasses.

The visit of ‘Revolutionary Wars’ hero Gilbert du Motler, the Marquis of Lafayette, to the US in 1824 spawned a large number of commemoratives.

Myanmar (Burmese) sapphires, renowned for a deep blue colour, are highly prized for reasons of scarcity, quality and history

Trebling its high estimate in a sale in Surrey was a large, in fact elephant folio-sized Atlas Royal… from c.1733

A cache of material from descendants of the Starbuck family, a Quaker whaling family influential in both the abolitionist movement and the founding of Nantucket as a whaling centre, was the highlight of Catherine Southon’s sale on February 8.

A group of watercolours from the collection of the renowned botanist, entomologist William Curtis (1746-99), drew attention in a Surrey sale.

The visit of ‘Revolutionary Wars’ hero Gilbert du Motler, the Marquis of Lafayette, to the US in 1824 spawned a large number of commemoratives.

The Birmingham silversmithing firm of Hukin & Heath received the approval of the progressive (if slightly pompous) writers of The Furniture Gazette when it signed a big name to produce some of its designs in 1878.

An early 19th century child’s mosaic alphabet, c.1820, is estimated at £100- 200 at Catherine Southon’s auction at Farleigh Court on November 16.