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A fresh-to-market consignment involving great names of Art Nouveau/Arts & Crafts and a New York buyer determined to have it… It hasn’t taken long for newcomer Heliers Auction (18% buyer’s premium) to come up with the sort of winning combination all auctioneers hope for.

Outselling much of the sort of furniture its owner could have worked on, an 18th century carpenter’s oak tool chest on stand was among the pleasant surprises for vendors at the opening sale of the year at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

A portrait thought to depict one of the most notorious characters of the Jacobean age drew strong bidding in Canterbury.

The script for the very first Doctor Who episode owned by the first actor to play the role is coming up at auction in the West Midlands.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

“Mid-century is pretty unstoppable as the ‘new antique’ with exhibitions on Fifties and Sixties designers like Charles and Ray Eames and Harry Bertoia now regular events,” says Lucy Ryder Richardson, founder with Petra Curtis of the Midcentury Modern Shows.

More than 100 paintings owned by the Royal Society of Marine Artists were dispersed in a Norfolk auction.

The Buckinghamshire countryside, with its rolling hills, fields, hedgerows and trees, inspired much of the art of John Nash (1893-1977), the younger and less well-known brother of Paul Nash.

Holker Hall, the privately owned country house in Cumbria, hosts its first fair in nearly 25 years this month.

“We were particularly encouraged by the performance of the furniture with many pieces selling to trade and private buyers for ‘old school’ prices.”

The 20th century portraitist Meredith Frampton (1894-1984) achieved remarkable success in a relatively short career.

An album of Indian photographs sold for £32,000 in Edinburgh provided ATG’s Pick of the Week in the previous issue (No 2331), but there was much more on offer in that 550-lot Scottish sale.

Commonly known as a What The Butler Saw machine, a late 19th-early 20th century Mutoscope was the most alluring of a consignment of a collection of amusement arcade machines offered at Canterbury Auction Galleries (20% buyer’s premium).