UK

With an Irish silver ‘seal salver’ gleaming at the first Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (23% buyer’s premium) sale of the year (ATG No 2427), Italy, China and Russia provided other highlights.

A c.1900 half-length oil on canvas portrait of a girl with flowers caught the eye of bidders at Lacy Scott & Knight (24% inc VAT buyer’s premium) in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

In ATG No 2427 we noted the sale at Sotheby’s on December 10, at a very much higher than expected £50,000, of a rare copy of the 1553 translation into ‘Scots English’ of Virgil’s Aeneid by Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld.

Extraordinarily high prices paid for the works of the Russian writer Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev were noted in ATG No 2425, and there were many more lots of interest in the sale held by Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) in which they were offered.

Time is of the essence in the story of Speed Menefee (1879-1968), the shortest-serving city mayor in US history – and original owner of a pocket watch offered at the Chester Decorative Antiques & Art Fair.

Falling short of ambitious hopes but leading the day at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) first sale of 2020 was a fine English Golden Age longcase clock.

Among the gems spotted in 2092 mixed lots at Stroud Auctions’ (18% buyer’s premium) year-opener on January 8, the best-seller was the final lot.

Grandma’s Attic Fairs has announced that its quarterly antiques and collectors’ fairs at the Botleigh Grange Hotel in Southampton have ceased due to the hotel’s sudden closure in mid-January, although a new venue has been found.

Populated with grotesque figures, this 16th century engraving after the early Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516) sold for £16,000 at auction in London.

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

Popular in the first decades of the 19th century, the eight-key flute is something of a transitional instrument, retaining many of the characteristics of the earlier baroque flute and the modern instrument.

Nineteen years after launching the annual 'Peaks and Glaciers' exhibition, dealer William Mitchell reflects that as the snow on the peaks themselves has contracted, so too has the supply of topographical Alpine scenes.

‘Masterpieces’ from the celebrated collections of Dr Martin Schøyen offered at a recent Christie’s (25/20/13.5% buyer’s premium) sale in London included some real rarities.

Our regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

This 18th century English provincial school full-length portrait depicts the jester Black John. He was in the employ of the famously eccentric John Arscott (1718-88) of the Tetcott estate in Devon, said to be the last man in England to keep a professional jester.

Two large watercolours painted by Y Ba Nyan (1897-1947), one of Burma’s most influential Modern artists, emerged for sale in Folkestone at the end of last year.

A dealer in the antiques-rich town of Petworth is launching a vintage, antiques and militaria fair in her hometown of Petersfield in Hampshire.