Auction Reports

The game of golf (originating on the eastern coast of Scotland) and mauchlineware (the name given to a family of wooden souvenirs made in south-west Scotland over a period of a century) would seem ideal bedfellows.

Estimated at £200-300, this kaskara sold for £8200 at Dawsons (23% buyer’s premium) in Maidenhead on October 28.

Leering 4ft 7in (1.4m) out from the saleroom wall and with a 4ft 2in (50cm) antlers spread, a massive taxidermy moose head and shoulders was the major trophy at the best-yet biannual Country and Sporting sale at Mitchells (22% buyer’s premium).

Top names in their different fields, ages and markets, Wurlitzer and Armand Marseilles were the star makers at Hartleys (17.5% buyer’s premium).

The Spanish woollen rug illustrated here was pitched at £100-200 in Mallams’ (25% buyer’s premium) Abingdon rooms on October 18.

In demand at home and abroad during his lifetime, the eminent miniaturist John Smart was an international draw at a trio of sales.

The auction at toy specialist C&T (22% buyer’s premium) in Kenardington, Kent, on November 3 included this very rare pair of doll’s shoes dated to c.1700.

Most angles on the collecting spectrum were covered in Bamfords’ (24.75% buyer’s premium) three-day autumnal catalogue.

Anglo-Chinese huanghuali bureau cabinet was spotted just down the road from saleroom

Prompted by a series of fatal mining disasters in the 19th century, a Royal Commission in 1907 recommended the establishment of a miners’ rescue service.

A clockmaking industry thrived in the Chew Valley of Somerset in the second half of the 17th century.

William De Morgan considered pieces from the Moonlight and Sunset Suite made in the early 1890s to be his very best work.

Among Gilbert Ledward’s (1880-1960) most admired works is the sensuous nude, 'Awakening' or 'The Awakening', that today stands in Ropers Garden on the Chelsea Embankment.

Other than the growing body of his surviving work, little is known about Robert (or Robart) Mindum.

After the James Macintyre & Co factory was awarded a gold medal at the St Louis International Exhibition in 1904, Moorcroft pottery was sold in the US by a number of boutique retailers including Shreve & Co of San Francisco and Tiffany in New York.

The frame to this Irish mahogany day bed with its bold paw feet and eagle uprights bears both the Strahan name and number stamp as well as an original paper trade label.

When teenagers Mark and Simon Fletcher came across a Victorian ginger beer bottle sticking out of the ground in the garden of their new home at Old Clee, near Grimsby, 40 years ago little did they know that a collecting bug was about to bite.

Bought in 1952 by a semi-pro Skegness musician who played with East Coast seaside entertainers, this steel string guitar got a big show of hands at Louth auction house John Taylors (18% buyer’s premium).

An “extremely rare” gold Thrymsa, or shilling, dating from 640-660 and minted in Northumbria or York, was the highlight of a pensioner’s collection of Anglo-Saxon coins sold at Canterbury Auction Galleries (27% buyer’s premium inc VAT) on October 3.

Antarctic maps take highest prices in collection relating to key Terra Nova crew member