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A bustling scene of Leicester Square by genre painter Edward Prentis (1797-1854) took £6800 at David Lay (18% buyer’s premium) of Penzance.

Their backgrounds might have made them strange bedfellows: Edgar Degas (1834-1917), the lawyer turned publicity-shy painter and printmaker, and Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), the sculptor from a working-class background who achieved fame with his large, often controversial works.

When Bill Kime, senior decorative arts specialist at the Waddington’s (20% buyer’s premium) saleroom, was contacted early last year by a couple from British Columbia about selling their collection of Martinware, he jumped at the chance.

More down to earth than the Bentley Speed Sixes and MG TDs of the classic car world, this 1961 GPO van nevertheless was a major draw at Biddle & Webb (20% buyer’s premium) in Birmingham.

Music played its part in the first Dominic Winter sale of the year, with books, scores and other autograph material from another but differently sourced Elgar collection to others offered before by the saleroom.

Milliner Victoria Grant is known for her high-society hats, worn by the likes of Kate Moss, Beyoncé and Carla Delevigne. But in an exhibition of her works at Old Master dealer Philip Mould’s gallery, society faces are on, not under, the hats.

After more than a decade of holding auctions in west London, Holts Auctioneers is relocating to a new saleroom to the south-east of the capital this March.

A good weight and a good name helped this London 1890 embossed silver punch bowl to double the lower estimate at TW Gaze (18% buyer’s premium).

This painting of a fire in north London drew heated bidding when it went under the hammer at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

The Zulu War medal awarded to Driver Charles Robson, batman to commanding officer Lieutenant John Chard during the epic defence of Rorke’s Drift, sold for £110,000 at Dix Noonan Webb on March 2.

Billed as a collection, possibly better described as a hoard, the contents of boxes stored in warehouse units were “the magic ingredients for auction goers” according to Dreweatts’ deputy chairman James Nicholson.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

First-edition sets with well-preserved jackets and perhaps a signature or an inscription usually make the really big money where Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy is concerned, but a recent Dublin sale produced something rather unusual.

Published jointly by Kellogg & Comstock of New York and D Needham of Buffalo, c.1849-50, the rare and amusing hand coloured lithograph shown below is titled The Independent Gold Hunter on His Way to California: I Neither Borrow nor Lend.

Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood of Exeter plans to hold its first-ever 20th century and contemporary art and design sale later this month.

Upholstered Victorian armchairs not being the most in-demand of auction lots at present, the £100-150 estimate of a pair offered at Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium) did not seem overly pessimistic.

Marked CRA and dated 1895, a set of three silver spoons offered at auction represent a key point in the career of one of the giants of the Arts & Crafts movement, Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942).

'Steal me not but let me jog; for I am Mrs Gwynn’s Dog.' For lovers of antique dog collars, collecting examples engraved with an amusing inscription such as this one, or a quirky owner’s name, is all part of the fun.

Three years since he launched his Suffolk auction house Bishop & Miller, managing director Oliver Miller is fine-tuning his sales line-up.

Almost a quarter of a century since ATG’s first overview of the numismatic market, ATG reviews the comings and goings of 2017