Pick of the Week

Lot 586 at Henry Aldridge’s (22% buyer’s premium) latest sale was one of the more curious lots to appear at auction in recent times.

This wood and plaster maquette of a carved ship figurehead of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson was keenly contested when it appeared at the Liverpool saleroom of Adam Partridge.

One of the strongest sums for Carlton Ware in recent times has been set in the Scottish Borders.

The national flag of India on offer at west London saleroom Lots Road in a Two Day Fine Interiors Auction was by the appearance alone seemingly nothing special.

Devon saleroom Atkins Auctions is celebrating a house record with the sale of this large and impressive Royal Doulton stoneware dragon vase for £16,000.

While modern communications would appear to have diminished the role of the King’s or Queen’s Messengers in the 21st century, the job and title remains.

Wemyss Ware bulldogs decorated with cabbage roses were first made by Robert Heron’s Kirkcaldy factory in the early years of the 20th century.

The lost art of murrine - the creation of complex patterns by fusing together slices of coloured glass cane - was rediscovered by glass blowers in the Venetian lagoon in the late 19th century.

The latest Homes & Interiors sale at Sworders included an extraordinary and highly personal relic from the Waterloo battlefield: a silver-mounted inkwell made from the ear of a war horse.

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.