UK

The greatest actor of Victorian times and the creator of Dracula were among the notable figures featured in an autograph album sold at Surrey auction house John Nicholson’s (25% buyer’s premium).

In 1953, the same year as the successful Mount Everest expedition were equipped with Rolex wristwatches, Rolex released the Oyster Perpetual Explorer.

Among the earliest watches in the auction titled Clocks & Watches Through the Ages held at TW Gaze (26.4% buyer’s premium inc VAT) in Diss, Norfolk, on March 4 was a Dutch timekeeper from the first half the 17th century.

Among the watercolours attracting interest at the earlier part of the year were four works by Lucy Elizabeth Kemp-Welch (1869-1958) that appeared at Lincoln saleroom Golding Young & Mawer (24% buyer’s premium).

A Roman marble bust of the tyrannical Emperor Commodus attracted a flurry of bids at Mallams (25% buyer’s premium) in Oxford.

A selection of stand-out watch lots coming up at sales around the UK

Based in workshops near the Place des Bergues in Geneva in the 1850s-60s, the jeweller Auguste Dutertre (1798-1866) found a niche making so-called ‘bijoux à montres’ - watch movements concealed in notebooks, powder-boxes or, as here, a pair of lorgnettes.

Cotswold Art Antiques Chelsea runs from March 20-23 at Chelsea Old Town Hall in London.

Stoneware vases and jugs from the famed Martin Brothers also show their sense of style and character

The Cumbrian city of Carlisle has much going for it including a medieval cathedral and proximity to Hadrian’s Wall. The city also offers a few antiques and vintage businesses, so here are three to start you off.

This silver desk clock designed in the form of a Rolls-Royce radiator grille with a red enamel badge and a miniature Spirit of Ecstasy mascot perched on top is thought to have been given as a Christmas gift by the British luxury car maker to one of its distributors.

Charlotte Morris Roper is at the helm of Plaza 20th Century Jewellery, a vintage jewellery business specialising in French and European items with a particular focus on the 1940s-60s.

Focus on two flower paintings created in Kent by different artists but offered at the same local saleroom

Dealer and organiser will take over the reins of the biannual event but still under the Penman banner

Letter sent from Holyrood implores a nobleman to support his course in the middle of the Jacobite Rising

Piaget launched its Polo wristwatch model in 1979.