Auction Reports

This huge porcelain breakfast service was made to welcome Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on their first visit to Scotland in 1842.

Extensive cross-section of design-themed objects offered in Edinburgh and London by same auction house

This half-tester bed with its carved heraldic lions and painted and gilt panels is part of an extensive bedroom suite made c.1870 by Collier & Plucknett.

Almost two decades after the first American cast-iron mechanical banks, John Harper and Company of the Albion Works in Willenhall, Staffordshire filed a patent for the Wimbledon bank on September 21, 1885.

Lyon & Turnbull’s Lalique sale had been displayed at the Mall Galleries in London with posters from the Shell Heritage Art Collection as a backdrop.

Lowestoft porcelain is particularly admired for its sense of place: the close ties the factory on Crown Street (then Bell Lane) enjoyed with its local community in Norfolk and Suffolk between 1757-1802.

While Georgian spectacles are relatively common at auction, 17th century examples are a rarer beast.

Dewlish House yields ‘good old-fashioned house sale with everything on offer’

The 27 animal models created for Beswick by Colin Melbourne represented the firm at its most avant garde.

Titanic specialist auction house Henry Aldridge & Son sells poignant items related to the rescue and recovery ships.

Sworders' latest Design sale included a group of Arts & Crafts items from the estate of the design writer and biographer Fiona MacCarthy (1940-2020).

Estimated at just £80-150, a Queen Anne or George I period needlework sampler sold for £10,000 via thesaleroom.com at Lawrences (25% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne.

Second sale since auction house move and name change is a British art pottery success

A week after Kinghams’ (23% buyer’s premium) inaugural Moreton-in-Marsh sale of British art pottery, the new Cotswolds rooms enjoyed a big hit in miniature – more specifically this portrait by one of Britain’s greatest miniaturists: John Smart (1743-1811).

Even 40 years ago, when the market for George Tinworth (1843-1913) anthropomorphic mouse groups was in its relative infancy, this 3½in (9cm) model above would have been a bargain at £1.

Intended to keep servants warm in the draughty watches of day and night at the entrances to grand houses, this porter’s chair was bought at Christie’s in 1989 and used in the vendor’s living room ever since.

A double-gourd dragon vase was one of two excellent Chinese pieces to emerge from a deceased Hampshire estate into Selborne auction house Hannam’s (23% buyer’s premium) rooms on May 4.

Bloomfield Auctions (15% buyer’s premium) in Belfast achieved a house record on May 11 with the sale of this William De Morgan vase for £15,000.

This Fijian kava bowl, or daveniyaqona, carved in the form of a shallow figure, would have been used for both the consumption of kava (yaqona – the intoxicating liquor of the pepper plant) by priests during religious rites and to hold sacred oil.

John Gresham was a third-generation member of a wealthy Hull timber-importing family.