Auctioneers

Target of a London silver specialist, this pair of late Victorian silver fluted vases was the best-seller at East Sussex auction house Burstow & Hewett (20% buyer’s premium).

Painted by Lt Gen Henry Hope Crealock (1831-91), this 6ft 8in (2m) wide pen and ink drawing is an eyewitness account of The Action of Bareilly – the battle of the last stronghold of Indian independence in 1858.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Codes are there to be broken, as the Second World War British team at Bletchley Park proved by cracking the German Enigma machines.

Topped by an eight-times estimate £19,500 Momoyama ‘Namban’ cabinet (ATG No 2391), Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood’s (21% buyer’s premium) sale in Exeter on April 16 had other estimate-busting lots from abroad.

An oil in gilt frame by John Thomas Serres (1759-1825) of 'The Entrance to Plymouth Sound' offered at Charles Miller’s (24% buyer’s premium) April 30 auction represented a primitive but effective early sat nav for ships.

A classic oil on canvas of yacht racing by renowned British painter Montague Dawson (1890-1973) was top-seller of The Marine Sale at Bonhams Knightsbridge (27.5/25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) on May 1.

Almost wholly reliant on slavery, the tobacco industry was the subtle target of British Abolitionists 50 years before Britain outlawed slavery and nearly a century before the American Civil War.

When it comes to buying limited-edition prints by LS Lowry (1887-1976), those produced by one publisher in particular stand out above the rest for collectors.

A sale of photographica and scientific instruments held at Reading’s Madejski Stadium included a rare work in the history of the microscope.

The American artist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is best known for the high-society ‘swagger’ portraits that had earned him fame and fortune, but the watercolours he produced in greater number are more commonly available at auction.

A portrait by John Opie (1761-1807) led nearly two dozen family portraits from the historic Penrose Estate in Porthleven, Cornwall, at local Penzance saleroom David Lay (18% buyer’s premium) on May 2.