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Classic Robert Thompson products from family collections underline current keen demand.

The centuries-old Indonesian habit of chewing betel nut, the fruit of the reach palm, was quickly adopted by settlers from the Dutch East India Company who appreciated both its psychoactive properties and its importance as a local social ritual.

The so-called Elcho bayonet was designed for the Martini-Henry rifle in 1870 by Lord Elcho, the 10th Earl of Wemyss & March.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Suzanne Hall is the organiser of a small monthly midweek antiques and fleamarket in Old Windsor which is reopening as lockdown eases on Wednesday, September 2, at the Memorial Hall.

While Sotheby’s and Christie’s shifted their main Old Master offerings to the end of July, Bonhams (27.5/25/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) maintained its auction earlier in the month with a sale in New Bond Street on July 7-8.

The Robert Thompson firm produced shire horses, such as this example offered by Lawrences (25% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne on July 23, from the 1960s-90s.

Edward Haughey, Baron Ballyedmond (1944-2014) – the founder of the Norbrook pharmaceutical group in Northern Ireland – proved just as influential in the world of politics as he was in business.

For the first time in 26 years GNB Fairs will not be running an antiques and collectors’ fair at the Brentwood Centre in Essex over the August bank holiday weekend.

The best-known press-moulded models made by John Derbyshire at the Regent Road Flint Glassworks in Salford are the series of animal and figural paperweights made in frosted, flint and coloured glass.

The lithographs of Alexander Calder (1898-1976) and Joan Miró (1893-1983) feature at Eames Fine Art’s exhibition Miró and Calder: Simpatico, which runs until August 30.

Solid selling punctuated by a number of estimate-eclipsing bids made the July 17-18 sale a very welcome return to business for Tennants (20% buyer’s premium).

In Tibetan Buddhism the elephant-headed deity Vignataka is treated with considerable ambivalence.

Leading works held back until mixed-category July auctions in a drawn-out sales season.

Sold at £140,000 in the first of two early manuscript sales held by Bloomsbury Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 8 was a lot featured in the front page story in ATG No 2447.

Featured in Previews, ATG No 2449, was an amusing illustration of the Vacuum Tube, a proposed new means of mass transport from the pages of the Glasgow Looking Glass, a publication that has come to be widely regarded as the world’s first comic.

Estimated at £100-200 but sold for £2800 at Thomas Watson (25% buyer’s premium) in Darlington on August was a set of four Worcester parian menu holders.

Around the year 1904, during the Second Period of Belleek production in Fermanagh, Ulster, designer William Harris designed the Five O’Clock pattern.

Firsts of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice have made as much as £115,000* at auction.

Artist who kept highland cattle at Midlands home to pose for romanticised Scottish scenes.