Auctioneers

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.

When an Irish antiques sleuth paid under £200 on eBay for what appeared to be a cigar case, information about its origin was sketchy at best.

A US-based vendor cashed in when a portrait by Sir William Orpen (1878-1931) of his lover Evelyn St George sold at Sotheby’s for more than double the amount it had fetched less than four months earlier at a New Jersey auction.

A Dickin Medal – the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross – is expected to reach £30,000-40,000 at coin and medal auction specialist Morton & Eden in London on December 4.