Scotland

A reminder of football’s early days, when huge crowds watched teams from the Scottish league playing counterparts from England, this 15ct gold medal with enamelled Scottish lion rampant was a hit when offered in its spiritual home of Glasgow by McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium).

A generation ago pieces such as this splendid 20in (50cm) famille rose ‘dragon’ charger from the Guangxu period (1874-1908) were valued chiefly as decorative objects. However, appreciation of the best quality porcelain produced in the last years of the Qing continues to grow.

Just a little less famous than Fry’s 'Five Boys' image is the illustration by Tom Browne of a multi-class group outside a sweetshop with the line from 'Troilus and Cressida: One touch of Nature makes the whole World kin'.

A rare contrast to the Jacobite glass which has served Edinburgh auction house Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium) so well was a large mid-18th century goblet with a wheel engraved portrait of the victor of Culloden. It was inscribed 'His Royal Highness William Duke Of Cumberland'.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the football league in Scotland has not always been dominated by Celtic and Rangers. The last time a team outside the Old Firm won the title was Aberdeen in 1985.

Celtic legend Tommy Gemmell’s boots from the 1967 European Cup final went under the hammer at Glasgow auction house McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium) on July 19. They doubled the lower estimate, selling at £14,000.

The National Museums of Scotland has been revealed as the buyer of the Storrar Coverlet – a rare woollen textile withdrawn at the 11th hour from a sale at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh in August.

More reliable today than they ever were in their lifetime, the male line of the Stuarts attracted the familiar devoted following at the annual Scottish Silver & Applied Arts sale at Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium).

Edinburgh auction spotlights the current market for the wares of Scotland’s most famous pottery.

Teacher’s single-owner collection stands out as part of Modern and Contemporary art sale.

Lyon & Turnbull’s African & Oceanic Art & Antiquities auction in Edinburgh on October 16 includes this Apulian-Corinthian helmet from the late 5th-early 4th century BC.

Of the 24 silversmiths known to have worked in the Aberdeenshire town of Banff from the 17th century until the trade died out in the mid-1800s, William Scott the Elder is the first whose name is recorded.

Michael Wilson of Highland Antiques in Aberdeen specialises in rare and collectable antique silver.

A Battle of Culloden period Clan MacTavish silver inlaid basket-hilted back sword sold for £4800, just below top estimate, at the Antony Cribb (22% buyer’s premium) auction on July 30.

Upcoming fairs in Scotland in the spotlight.

The annual Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe which run this year from August 2-26 attract audiences of 400,000-plus visitors to the city.

A medal, silver cigar box and ‘oil lamp’ lighter sold at Ramsay Cornish's latest sale in Edinburgh had come by descent from Major Jonathan Leslie Dean (1859-1926). He was a key participant in the defence of O’okiep (1902), the small town in the Northern Cape that was besieged by Boer Commandos from April 4-May 4, 1902, towards the end of the Second Boer War.

Edinburgh gallery Fettes Fine Art offers a painting by Scottish artist John Phillip at its local Galloway Fair this week.