Auctioneers

In the early 1930s, following the closure of its ironstone mines, unemployment in the east Cleveland region of North Yorkshire reached a harrowing 90%.

Asian Art in London announced the winners of the first group of its awards last week.

A George III mahogany china cabinet became one of the most expensive pieces of English furniture ever sold when it took $2.2m (£2m) during the opening salvos of Christie’s New York sale of the Ann and Gordon Getty collection.

A microscope used by Joseph Banks (1743-1820) on Captain Cook’s first Voyage of Discovery (1768-71) is going under the hammer estimated at £30,000-50,000 on November 1.

A vast collection of Royal Worcester porcelain put together by an Australian couple during frequent trips to UK dealers and auction houses is up for sale next month.

Despite wider economic uncertainty, prices for LS Lowry (1887-1976) seem to keep on rising.

The sale of Silver and Objects of Vertu at Bonhams Knightsbridge on October 20-21 was topped by a multi-estimate bid for a remarkable flatware service by Tiffany.

Charles de Temple is much admired as a key figure in the British 1960s modernist movement – one of the designers who ushered bold and abstract jewellery to the forefront of fashion.

Leading the sale of Fine Furniture, Works of Art & Clocks at Woolley & Wallis (25/12% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury on October 6 was a very fine pair of blue john and ormolu perfume burners by Matthew Boulton and John Fothergill.

A number of pictures from another single-owner collection caught the eye at Dreweatts a month earlier than the Flaxley Abbey auction.

The growing interest in inter- and post-war works by Vietnamese artists - particularly those alumni of the Ecole des Beaux Arts d’Indo-Chine - means that France, as a former colonial power in the region, is well supplied with examples.

At ATG we always enjoy hearing about younger members of the trade making progress in their careers.

Translation was first time a major poem of antiquity appeared in an English language form.

Among the potential highlights in Aguttes’ Contemporary Art auction in Neuilly on November 2 will be this work by Pierre Soulages (b.1919), 30 mai 1981.

Among the most desirable of all ‘Prattware’ transfer printed wares are the series of very rare and highly decorative advertising plaques produced for firms such as Crosse & Blackwell and Huntley & Palmers.

Naive artworks that can also suit modern decorating taste are rising in popularity and price.

Bid to £3400, a 1703 first edition of Martin Martin’s Description of the Western Islands of Scotland in a later full calf binding proved the most expensive item in the 250-lot book and ephemera section that opened an October 5-7 auction at Stride & Son (18% buyer’s premium).

Glasgow School designer’s embroidered silk design instantly stood out in a box of fabric.

Often from poor communities and mostly illiterate, men were limited in the ways in which they could plight their troth in 18th and 19th century Wales.