Auctioneers

Small-scale Mouseman carvings were typically made in Kilburn for promotional purposes – attracting custom at the Yorkshire Show or similar trade events. Rarities continue to bring muscular sums in the salerooms.

The French artist Alexandre-François Desportes (1661-1743) spent much of his early career as a portraitist, including a notable spell working at the court of King Jan Sobieski of Poland.

With its exaggerated, curved armrests, ample cushioning and cantilevered frame, the H269 bentwood chair is perhaps the best known of all Czech industrial furniture designs.

The inaugural sale at Rare Book Auctions (26.5% buyer’s premium) in Lichfield included this signed and inscribed first printing of Terry Pratchett’s 'The Colour of Magic'.

Not only was this Robert Wallace Martin (1843-1923) stoneware ‘face’ jug deemed an excellent example of its type, but it was sold with a hand-written letter to David Oxen Esq, the original buyer of the jug in 1914.

The Scottish printer David Bryce (1845-1923) said that when he “descended to the miniature, mite and midget size” he had “many a scoff and jeer as to the absurdity of the production”.

In 1897 Charles Francis Annesley Voysey agreed a contract with Alexander Morton and Co to provide designs for a minimum of 10 textile designs each year for five years.

Sale that featured Constable and Drury big-hitters also included intriguing lots at lower price levels

The Autumn Auction at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood in Exeter on October 15-16 includes an array of unusual objects from the collection of the late Christopher Hawkings, who at one time was the co-owner of Phillips, Son & Neale in London’s Bond Street (the firm that later became Phillips).

A recent sale at Claydon Auctioneers (21.5% buyer’s premium) in Buckinghamshire included a suite of aluminium bedroom furniture by the HG Hawker Engineering Company.

Plucked from a box of bric-a-brac brought in for a general sale, a Commonwealth gilt brass sealing wax box sold for £5200 at Lawrences of Crewkerne. A clever pun gives a clue to its maker’s identity - and perhaps his political leanings.

The Swinton Estate, which spans approximately 20,000 acres of North Yorkshire, has been in the Cunliffe-Lister family since the 1880s.