Auctioneers

Estimated at £400-600, this ebonised chiffonier sold for £45,800 at the Mander (24% buyer’s premium inc VAT) auction in Newton, Suffolk.

Halls’ Country House & Asian Art sale in Shrewsbury on May 15 will include a 21in (54cm) Kangxi famille verte vase decorated with a panorama of Asiatic birds, butterflies and dragonflies.

This Meiji period (1868-1912) bronze of a comical seated monkey, holding an inro and netsuke that he inspects by lifting a pair of spectacles was a recent valuation day find for Fieldings of Stourbridge.

Included in a mixed-discipline sale held in Paris by Daguerre (28% buyer’s premium inc VAT) at Drouot was a Sèvres bough pot in soft paste porcelain.

Plague water is one of the more striking entries in a now worn but finely bound volume of cookery and medical recipes sold recently in London.

Works by Namikawa Yasuyuki underline how buyers are aiming at the very best when it comes to the Japanese market ahead of a series of UK sales.

Estimated at £300-500, a finely decorated Qing famille rose pen box and cover was knocked down for £33,000 at a recent sale at John Nicholson’s (25% buyer’s premium).

A Chinese ‘sleeper’ emerged in a Vintage and General Sale at Gardiner Houlgate (20% buyer’s premium), Corsham, near Bath on April 25 courtesy of a textbook ‘scholar’s’ object.

Robert S Huthart, the Newcastle-born manager of the Hong Kong department store conglomerate Lane Crawford, was first introduced to netsuke on a visit to Tokyo when he was given of a copy of 'The Wonderful World of Netsuke' by Raymond Bushell.

This 3ft 10in (1.15m) wide Qianlong (1736-95) three-colour lacquer throne merits a catalogue of its own and an £800,000-1.2m estimate at Christie’s in London on May 14.

A good example of the attraction of a dated and named inscription was evident at Woolley & Wallis’ (25% buyer’s premium) recent ceramics auction in Salisbury.

The highlight of a dedicated ceramics sale held at Drouot by Fraysse (22.17% buyer’s premium) was this large 16 x 22in (41 x 56cm) early French, Moustiers, faience basin made at the Clerissy factory.

Henry Aldridge & Son will offer items from the Skidmore collection at its May 18 sale – including these pieces of late 19th century Chinese ‘export’ silver.

At Donnington Priory on May 23, Dreweatts will hold a sale of Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art where this 17th or 18th century bronze ‘dragon’ censer and original stand, with Xuande four-character mark, is pitched at £8000-12,000.

The famous Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba once owned this pair of ‘Dragon and Phoenix’ bottle vases which were sold at auction from her estate in 2015.

Sent to auction by a descendant, two partly broken and disbound journals relating to the early years in the naval career of William Chimmo (1828-91) proved an unexpected success in a recent South Cerney sale.

Last November Roseberys in London sold a set of 16 paintings on silk by Kim Jun Keun, better known by his artistic name Kisan, for a surprise £40,000.

While dedicated sales of English and Continental ceramics are rarer beasts in the saleroom calendar these days, the traditional mixed-discipline regional sales are a repository for plenty of material from the main factories of the 18th and 19th centuries.

A pair of Worcester dishes of so-called ‘Blind Earl’ form was a best-seller in the ceramics section that opened Dreweatts’ (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) spring sale.

While Sotheby’s and Christie’s no longer hold regular dedicated auctions of European ceramics, they still cater for elements of this market in their main centres worldwide via series of mixed-discipline traditional decorative arts auctions.