Scotland

Gillian Raffles (1930-2021) was one of a very small number of pioneering female gallerists in Britain’s post-war art scene.

Hard to believe perhaps in today’s glamorous world of the Champions League, but the great Ferenc Puskás (1927-2006) and Real Madrid once graced the turf of Scottish football club Kilmarnock.

Modern-day observers of the Scottish football scene could be forgiven for thinking that Celtic dominance is perfectly normal.

Among the Italian Old Masters bringing interest at auctions across the country over the summer was an intriguing painting of the Holy Family that emerged at Lyon & Turnbull (26% buyer’s premium) in Edinburgh.

A group lot of works by or pertaining to CS Lewis performed rather better than its modest guide at Scottish firm Taylors Auction Rooms (26% buyer’s premium).

Paxton House in Berwick-upon-Tweed has been reunited with an important Regency sofa it had lost for a century.

This unusual 19th-century Indian enamel-on-copper footed bowl soared to 26 times its top estimate at Lindsay Burns (22% buyer’s premium) in Perth.

A rare Iznik pottery tile made for the Çini li Hamam bathhouse during the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent sold for £195,000 at Lyon & Turnbull.

Dealers Douglas and Brett Coupar-Fleming have spent the past year renovating a former department store in the seaside town of Leven on the east coast of Scotland.

The Art Deco design movement found a unique expression in Cotswolds School furniture - one that sought to blend clean lines with traditional English materials and craftsmanship.

The London-based design company Isokon, which produced furniture by Wells Coates and Marcel Breuer, and Gerald Summers’ firm Makers of Simple Furniture both explored the radical possibilities of lamination.

Letter to Queen Elizabeth I written after Robert Dudley’s marriage lacks the earlier flirtatious tone

Among the most desirable of all Scottish garden ornaments are the Garnkirk urns, a pair of neoclassical vases first made for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

A stylised still-life by Robert Colquhoun (1914-62) was one of a number of good quality Scottish pictures generating interest at a recent sale at Taylors Auctions (26% buyer’s premium) in Montrose, Angus.

When a copy of 'The Ristigouche and Its Salmon Fishing' by Dean Sage came up for auction at Bonhams New York in 2011 it was described “the rarest and most beautiful book on salmon fishing and with an important chapter on the collecting of angling literature”.