UK

Entered by a vendor who hated them, a pair of 6in (15.5cm) long 19th century nutcrackers reflected in their way two different aspects of auctioneering today: how smaller country firms see their future and what will happen to antique ivory items when most of the trade in them is banned.

A busier than usual summer for the local housing market appeared to boost both vendor consignments and bidding at Market Harborough auctioneers Gildings (18% buyer’s premium).

The second published work of the ‘flower book lady’ has no other auction appearance

Will Fisher runs Jamb on London’s Pimlico Road where he deals in antique and reproduction fireplaces and lighting.

Marking 20 years in business, Clark Art is holding a show featuring works by some of the key artists it has championed across two decades.

The charity Oxfam estimates that it saves about 47 million items of clothing a year from landfill. Its new superstore in Oxford is promoting Oxfam’s 'Second Hand September' campaign with the aim of encouraging people to buy vintage instead of new clothes.

A pocket globe with some areas still a mystery leads a maritime auction at Exeter saleroom Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood.

Pitched at £500-800, this grand sonnerie carriage clock came with little information for bidders at Jacobs & Hunt’s (22% buyer’s premium) sale in Liss other than plentiful illustrations and the name C Marcks & Co, Bombay and Poona engraved to the silvered dial.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from September 17-October 4, 2019.

Estimated at just £40-60, this ebonised wood and alabaster table casket sold to a bidder using thesaleroom.com for £1600 at Peter Francis (20% buyer’s premium) of Carmarthen on August 28.

A model example of trans-European trucking, this diecast van advertising a Swiss company was made in Italy and sold to a German buyer at the Runcorn rooms of British Toy Auctions (18% buyer’s premium).

A final selection of works from the London summer sale of books from the Fox Pointe Manor library* includes a gruesome account of London’s ‘Great Plague’.

The centenary of the influential design school provides a theme for the final Battersea Park fair of 2019

A one-day antiques festival returns to London’s Church Street for its third year.

Boosted by the ‘wrong therefore rare’ factor – so important in the world of collectables – a 1977 British quad film poster for the first Star Wars film took top billing in a 250-lot specialist sale at Ewbank’s (24% buyer’s premium).

'La horde de barbares' (1934) by Surrealist painter Max Ernst (1891-1976) is offered in an exhibition dedicated to the German artist at M&L Fine Art.

As previously announced in ATG, IACF has added to its fairs’ portfolio the biannual and popular Peterborough Festival of Antiques.

How very different London’s Euston station looks in this coloured aquatint from a copy of Thomas Talbot Bury’s 'Six Coloured Views on the London and Birmingham Railway'.

One of the star turns in the summer sale in South Cerney of Martin Orsky’s wonderful library emerged towards the end of the day. This was a uniformly framed set of five stencil coloured woodcut broadsides, heightened with bodycolour and glitter and representing ‘The Five Senses’, sold at £30,000.

Coinex, the British Numismatic Trade Association’s annual showpiece fair, returns on September 27-28.