Auctioneers

Some strong bids were achieved in 2024 for the best of the Della Robbia Pottery but none higher than the £14,000 tendered at Woolley & Wallis (plus 26% buyer’s premium) for a large plaque by Cassandra Annie Walker.

During the 1860s the South Kensington Museum in London (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) campaigned to have electrotypes made of important historic artefacts.

Erik Weisz (1864-1926) launched his monumental career as the illusionist Harry Houdini in 1891 as a specialist in card tricks.

The auction market can be a fickle beast, as results for the same items offered on separate occasions sometimes show.

Porcelain birth tablets with their roots in Suffolk are unique to the factory

A recent weekly sale at Gorringe’s (25% buyer’s premium) in Lewes included an English porcelain rarity: a blue and white Cannon Ball pattern beaker and cover.

The hugely versatile Christopher Dresser sold 37 different designs to the Sheffield firm of Dixon and Sons from 1879-82.

A stand-out lot of Bellmans’ (25% buyer’s premium) biannual Fine Clocks auction on December 5 was a chronometer made for the 1874 British expedition to observe the transit of Venus.

Two sales in London offered personal collection of the Hobarts including artists they had championed

Jewellery dating to c.1960 was once owned by well-known women in New York and Palm Beach