South-east England

Two events taking place in the north and south of England offer array of vintage delights

In market terms, ecclesiastical gates are not the subject of mass appeal but examples by major 19th century designers certainly had their devotees at two June sales.

This c.1800 flintlock pistol below by James Wilkinson, London, was used on packet ships to protect the General Post Office mail.

In the 1950s French designer Raymond Cohen and his firm Cohray were producing a range of ultra-modern furniture that – although made for the machine age – were all put together by hand.

The resurgent interest in quality Japanese material and the slower revival of English furniture were both evident in a cabinet on stand sold at West Sussex auction house Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium).

Bearing a thumbprint on the title-page – along with a note by a secretary, Susan Macey, witnessing it as genuine – a 1988 UK edition of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief of History of Time… was estimated at £200-400 but sold for £3000 in a May 30 sale.

Britain still has many ‘antiques’ towns and streets – those picturesque corners of the island populated by shops, galleries and centres that together act as a magnet for antiques tourists. Two of the largest communities of dealers close to London are Petworth and Hungerford, while a busy schedule of regular fairs and markets takes place to the south-west of London.

The annual three-day Kent County Show is a big favourite in the southeast of England and has been held at the Kent County Showground, near Maidstone since 1964.

Mallams (20% buyer’s premium) offered 12 impeccably provenanced pieces by Peter Waals (1870-1937) at Oxford on May 23.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Jane Alexander of Dovehouse Fine Antiques Fairs is always pleased to welcome new faces to her antiques fairs at the Dorking Halls in Surrey.

A testimony to its popularity, the small weekly fleamarket in Buckingham has been running for more than 25 years.

Inscribed by Winston Churchill “…For Mrs Johnston in these great days”, a 1941 (second) edition of 'Into Battle', the first of a number of collections of his wartime speeches to be published, was part of a lot that sold for a higher than predicted £3000 in a Surrey sale.

A three-day biannual vintage and collectors’ fair held outdoors on a farm near Hailsham in East Sussex is now in its second year. It runs this weekend from Friday to Sunday, June 21-23.

A rare Roman gold aureus, found by a metal detectorist in a field in Kent earlier this year, was hammered down at Dix Noonan Webb last week for a house record £460,000.

Desmond Morris on his many lives as a zoologist, painter, author and collector

Golden Age collaboration between two London clockmakers leads a look at the market including hammer highlights, auction previews and dealer news.

Remarkably, of the approximately 110 clockmakers recorded working in Lewes from the mid-17th to the early 19th centuries, as many as 10 were operating almost side-by-side at this town on the River Ouse in the late 18th century.

A remarkable cache of paintings depicting bomb-scarred London during the Blitz by a Jewish artist who devoted herself to a life of altruistic endeavour sold at an auction in Sussex.