Scotland

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.

Week of royal celebration now includes a one-day 20-exhibitor antiques and vintage fair.

Beneath the famous anchor and dolphin device that denotes a product of the Aldine presses in Venice, the final leaf of a 1516 edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses below bears an inscription that reveals the reason this little work in its later vellum binding sold at £6000.

Emily Walsh is managing director of The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh, which deals in Scottish art from 1650 to the present.

Topping by some way an offering of 300 pieces of jewellery at Lyon & Turnbull’s (25% buyer’s premium) Edinburgh sale was a Persian gold and niello decorated Esther Scroll holder.

More of a curiosity than a clock but a decorator’s dream, a life-size caricature of a smiling Chinese man clutching a willow-pattern plate with gilt dragon hands emerged in the Ayr rooms of Thomas R Callan (17.5% buyer’s premium).

Sotheby’s believes it has found a missing piece from the Lewis chessmen hoard – the cache of 12th or 13th century walrus ivory carvings that chiefly resides in the British Museum.

One of the last oil paintings by Scottish artist William McTaggart (1835-1910) is on offer in a show of highlights at The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh.

The Watch Sale at Fellows in Birmingham on June 18 includes arare Rolex Oyster Cosmograph Daytona chronograph with ‘reverse panda’ white on black dial.

James Ware (1859-1913), a merchant navy captain, turned to missionary work following his arrival in Shanghai.