Pick of the Week

Courtesy of Dava Sobel’s 1995 best-seller, the compelling story of a Yorkshire horologist’s struggle to receive a prize for creating a reliable and accurate method for determining longitude at sea is well known.

A handsome pair of Regency period Egyptian Revival silver candlesticks with a Jane Austen connection sold well above hopes at Lacy Scott & Knight in Bury St Edmunds.

The Gunter rule was designed to help with the mathematical calculations necessary in navigation.

A hitherto unrecorded Art Deco masterwork by Armand-Albert Rateau (1882-1938) caught the eye at an Italian sale.

The sale of a private collection of arms and armour at C&T Auctions in Kent, on May 13 included a brass figure of a cavalryman from a small but well-known group of Indian toy soldiers.

The etching 'A View in America in 1778' is a satire on the progress of the American Revolution.

Stands and side tables were a prominent feature in many large Georgian houses and were used for a variety of quite specific purposes. However, it is extremely rare to find a piece of furniture designed specifically to take a goldfish bowl.

Among the more extraordinary forms of French furniture is the ‘machine pneumatique’ – a device used in the Age of Enlightenment to demonstrate the mysterious properties of the vacuum or ‘the energy of the nothingness’.

The pages of ATG have included many antiques stalls over the years but not many that measure just over 2ft long.

The Fine Sale on March 26 at Cheffins in Cambridge included a group of pictures consigned by a descendant of the artist known as Philip Villamil of Jamaica (1814-78).

Among the most desirable of all Scottish garden ornaments are the Garnkirk urns, a pair of neoclassical vases first made for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

The velocipede is considered the direct forerunner to the modern bicycle, especially a series of French examples produced with pedals, cranks and handlebars in the 1850s-60s.

Born in London, artist Tom Roberts (1856-1931) became famous on the other side of the world painting the people and landscape of Australia.

Turned down by several publishers, Beatrix Potter shouldered the expense of privately printing The Tale of Peter Rabbit with Strangeways Printers in December 1901.

The fashion for eye miniatures – or lover’s eyes – is said to have begun with a politically and socially unacceptable royal affair.

Chanel No 5 was perfected in the late summer and autumn of 1920 by the French-Russian chemist and perfumer Ernest Beaux.

Even when set against the standards of royal pageantry, the crowning of George IV at Westminster Abbey on July 19, 1821, was a lavish affair.