UK

The Midcentury Modern Show’s pop-up event at the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield on Saturday and Sunday, June 29-30, will feature 32 dealers in Midcentury items.

A poet and dramatist, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was once considered by many to be the true author of Shakespeare’s plays.

Organiser says expectations are high for new showground fair starting at end of the month.

A sale with multinational appeal – and a baroque revival cabinet spared from Rentokil.

Italy – or more specifically Sicily – came up trumps for Stamford auction house Batemans (20% buyer’s premium) in the form of this 4½in (11cm) carved coral and copper-gilt urn and cover.

Other than davenports, few pieces of functional antique furniture fell farther down the price ladder during the slump than sofa tables but the examples here bucked the fashion at Moore Allen & Innocent (20% buyer’s premium) of Cirencester.

The fitted interior of this William & Mary casket, below, was later but its fine brass-bound marquetry exterior with hidden lock mechanism made it the most eye-catching lot at Mallams’ (22.5% buyer’s premium) auction in Cheltenham on June 6.

Ceramics commemorating the coronation of Edward VIII are less rare than often supposed, having been produced in abundance before the coronation was aborted. Most bring relatively small sums.

Featuring in the same two-day auction as a £7000 cache of Beatrix Potter ephemera found in a Cumbrian Victorian villa which had made national headlines, this less-heralded sofa impressed at 1818 Auctioneers (17.5% buyer’s premium).

This c.1800 flintlock pistol below by James Wilkinson, London, was used on packet ships to protect the General Post Office mail.

‘Boxing Badgers’ is one of just two known occasions when the celebrated taxidermist Peter Spicer (1839-1935) ventured into the strange world of the anthropomorphic tableau.

In the 1950s French designer Raymond Cohen and his firm Cohray were producing a range of ultra-modern furniture that – although made for the machine age – were all put together by hand.

A rare 19th century pearlware horse is available to buyers visiting BADA’s inaugural staging of the BADA Collection at 46 Pimlico Road this summer.

An artwork painted with oil and sand is among the offerings at the inaugural Fair for Saatchi.

A festival of rugs and textiles organised by HALI magazine joins the busy line-up of London events this summer.

The resurgent interest in quality Japanese material and the slower revival of English furniture were both evident in a cabinet on stand sold at West Sussex auction house Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium).

Bearing a thumbprint on the title-page – along with a note by a secretary, Susan Macey, witnessing it as genuine – a 1988 UK edition of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief of History of Time… was estimated at £200-400 but sold for £3000 in a May 30 sale.

Among stand-out exhibitions in the well-represented area of works on paper at this year’s London Art Week (LAW) is a collection of drawings by the German artist Adolph Menzel (1815-1905).