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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.

In his annual exhibition, Battersea folk art dealer Robert Young offers a primitive livestock painting of a brown and white cow which was once as obscure in appearance as in its history.

A round-up of art and antiques news from the previous seven days, including two key appointments at Phillips.

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.

A library focused on Antarctic exploration gave a New Zealand saleroom one of its more successful book and manuscript auctions since the company’s foundation in 2011.

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.

Retired art dealer Patrick Payne, formerly of Arden Gallery, Henley-in-Arden, and later of Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire, has died at his daughter’s home in London aged 86.

At an uncertain time bidders are assertive when the best and not the rest comes up at auction.

A c.1946 Italian wrought-iron dressing table was among the stand-out sales during the spring Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair in Battersea.

In the latest of our occasional series of collector interviews, we talk to entrepreneur Algy Cluff, a former army officer and oil and mining business supremo, about his collecting tastes

A portrait of rare books dealer Tim Bryars of Bryars & Bryars features in the Royal Society of Portrait Painters’ Annual Exhibition.

The May 14-16 Interiors series at Bellmans of Wisborough Green, West Sussex, features a substantial Asian section.

This framed wood panel decorated in gold, silver and red lacquer with a pair of spiny lobsters on a rocky outcrop is signed 'Gyoen Hachijuni O Koma Zeshin' (An old man in his 82nd year, Kona Zeshin) and dated 1888.