Auctions

When it was last sold 30 years ago, Chinese export figures of this rare type were thought to depict a Dutch lady - perhaps the wife of a governor of Batavia.

As the gift-giving season arrives, jewellery seldom disappoints. Pictured here are a range of antique and vintage jewels coming up for sale in the next couple of weeks, all with estimates under £1500.

A recent sale at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (26% buyer’s premium) in Exeter included a late 15th century Italian manuscript that is thought to be a codex unicus.

A pair of pistols that were presented by Napoleon just six weeks after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo are on offer in Thomas Del Mar’s sale of Fine Antique Arms, Armour & Militaria on December 4.

ATG’s pick of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com, featuring both the highest prices over-estimate and the top prices paid online.

Maryland auction offers a fascinating collection of Chinese porcelain intended for foreign markets

A single-owner collection of Antiquities & Oddities offered without reserve by Shapiro Auctions 30/29/18.9% buyer’s premium) in Mamaroneck, New York included several fine South American objects made in the Spanish colonial era.

While the buying audience still loves its brand names and big stones, jewellery with a narrative is a strength of the market

Booming regional auction house points to experience and contacts as key to source high calibre works

Our regular listing of UK and Irish books and works on paper sales

The Beatles Memorabilia Auction at Tracks (25% buyer’s premium) in Chorley, Lancashire included one of the most desirable of all commercial Fab Four items: the 1964 Beatles record player by NEMS Enterprises.

Former Masterpiece fair chairman was particularly enthusiastic about antiquities

John Wallis was one of the leading publishers of board games in the early 19th century. One of them, Science in Sport, or the Pleasures of Astronomy, was first issued in 1804 and revised in 1815.

The French-American sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) started making jewellery in the early 1970s after she was introduced to the Italian goldsmith Giancarlo Montebello in Paris.