East of England

While few will welcome the news that Bonhams – the last of the major auction houses to hold regular sales Japanese works of art in London – is moving its department to Paris (ATG No 2690), there will be opportunities for UK salerooms that continue to plough this selective but occasionally fruitful furrow.

Letters found in family archive include first-hand accounts from St Helena in 1821

By the time H Turner’s book on billiards came out in 1849 (Northampton, printed for the author by JT Burgess) the game was hundreds of years old – with roots back to the 15th century.

With crossover interest to several collecting disciplines, early manuscript recipe and remedy books continue to thrive at auction.

Result for album of watercolours underlines the current demand in salerooms for such subjects

Sworders’ run of single-owner sales continues with a two-day auction on May 13-14 titled Paul Atkinson, The Nomadic Collector.

This rare playbill on silk printed in the Arctic in 1852 sold for £4400 at a recent sale at Keys (25% buyer’s premium) in Aylsham.

In 1950, the Swiss artist, architect and designer Pierre Jeanneret (1896-1967) joined his cousin Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (who assumed the pseudonym Le Corbusier) to create a new capital of Punjab.

The second part of the Beedham Collection – a fine array of early oak furniture and associated works of art from the Derbyshire dealing family – came for sale at Bishop & Miller (25% buyer’s premium) in Glandford, Norfolk, on March 19.

Who doesn’t love an antiques street market? Plenty of buzz and lots to buy makes these a winning formula, so much so that they sometimes expand.

Ken Besford of Durham Promotions NE, organiser of the Great North Decorative Antique Fair, is heading down the straight for the spring edition (Saturday and Sunday, April 26-27) of the triannual event he launched last year at Newcastle Racecourse.

The Fine Sale on March 26 at Cheffins in Cambridge included a group of pictures consigned by a descendant of the artist known as Philip Villamil of Jamaica (1814-78).