Auctions

Among the earliest watches in the auction titled Clocks & Watches Through the Ages held at TW Gaze (26.4% buyer’s premium inc VAT) in Diss, Norfolk, on March 4 was a Dutch timekeeper from the first half the 17th century.

March is traditionally the month for drawings and works on paper in Paris, a magnet that attracts enthusiasts from around the world to the French capital.

Among the watercolours attracting interest at the earlier part of the year were four works by Lucy Elizabeth Kemp-Welch (1869-1958) that appeared at Lincoln saleroom Golding Young & Mawer (24% buyer’s premium).

A Roman marble bust of the tyrannical Emperor Commodus attracted a flurry of bids at Mallams (25% buyer’s premium) in Oxford.

A selection of stand-out watch lots coming up at sales around the UK

Staged in England from medieval times through to the early 19th century, bear baiting provided a popular theme in ceramic art in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Based in workshops near the Place des Bergues in Geneva in the 1850s-60s, the jeweller Auguste Dutertre (1798-1866) found a niche making so-called ‘bijoux à montres’ - watch movements concealed in notebooks, powder-boxes or, as here, a pair of lorgnettes.

The Spirit of Ecstasy sculpture was created by Charles Sykes as a mascot for Rolls-Royce cars.

A gold and enamel Dent pocket watch given by Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, to the Italian opera singer Giuseppina Grassini surfaced for sale at an auction in Austria

Stoneware vases and jugs from the famed Martin Brothers also show their sense of style and character

This silver desk clock designed in the form of a Rolls-Royce radiator grille with a red enamel badge and a miniature Spirit of Ecstasy mascot perched on top is thought to have been given as a Christmas gift by the British luxury car maker to one of its distributors.

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

Focus on two flower paintings created in Kent by different artists but offered at the same local saleroom

Letter sent from Holyrood implores a nobleman to support his course in the middle of the Jacobite Rising

Piaget launched its Polo wristwatch model in 1979.