Devon

This rare medal issued to those involved in the 1916 Easter Rising is up for grabs in the collector’s auction at Plymouth Auction Rooms on February 16.

THOMSON Roddick Scottish Auctions have relocated to a new modern saleroom in Dumfries after holding auctions in Annan for over 100 years and also at the Easterbrook Hall.

EVER since the recognition in 1855 of the potential of a 93-acre site close to the Devon town of Newton Abbot, there’s been a fine tradition of competitive horseracing.

A vast photographic postcard archive depicting Devon in the first half of the 20th century has emerged in Nottinghamshire.

HOT on the heels of their event at Arley Hall in Cheshire, Cooper Antiques Fairs move on to two more March fixtures, the more notable being the one held this weekend from March 18 to 20 at Powderham Castle, near Exeter in Devon.

THE new-style collectors’ sales held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt (15% buyer’s premium) at Taunton are proving a winning format, with wide-ranging, briefly catalogued but illustrated lots with low reserves.

INCLUDED in Potburys’ (12.5% buyer’s premium) sale in Sidmouth, Devon on February 8 and 9 was a 75-lot collection of pictures by the Orientalist painter Charles Robertson (1844-91) consigned from his granddaughter’s estate. They appear to have been the works that remained in the family after the artist’s Godalming studio was sold off following his death from a heart attack aged 47.

THE Westpoint Antique and Collectors Fair will revert to being a two-day event when it kicks off Devon County Antiques Fairs 24-date programme for 2005.

Troika is known for two distinctly different styles – the rough textured wares of which the Cycladic masks are now the most celebrated and the scarcer Brancusi-style smooth monochromatic glazed wares that reveal a rather different aesthetic.

Tom Pearse, Tom Pearse, lend me your grey mare, All along, down along, out along lee, For I want to go to Widecombe Fair, With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan Whiddon, Harry Hawke, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.The traditional song Widecombe Fair was well known in Devon around the middle of the 19th century, as was the name Thomas Cobley Gent, of Buttsford, Colebrooke.

JAMES Sillett was a jobbing artist from the Norwich School of painters, who worked on a broad spectrum of projects including heraldic painting and stage scene decoration, but he is best known as a competent miniaturist.

A RELATIVELY quiet day for S.J. Hales (15% buyer's premium) who specialise in English ceramics, but the August 4 sale still attracted plenty of Staffordshire specialists as usual.

DUNCAN Chilcott, until recently South West regional director and senior valuer at Bonhams, is setting up an auction business in Tiverton.

WEST Country foodies will no doubt be aware that the two-star Michelin chef John Burton Race and his family (they of French Leave fame) have recently moved to Devon to take over the famous Carved Angel restaurant in Dartmouth from Joyce Molyneux. Burton Race is planning a refurbishment and will rename the restaurant the New Angel in reference to its new mascot, a glass sculpture of an angel with a sword commissioned from the nearby Dartington factory.

Sold at £5500 in a general antiques sale held by Michael J. Bowman of Newton Abbot on March 13 was a group of six manuscript poems written by Ted Hughes for his neighbour Ronald Yates.

THE Fine Art Auction Group are to adopt the Dreweatt Neate Fine Art name for their full network of regional salerooms. The move follows the addition of the Donnington Priory company to the group’s portfolio in November last year.

FLUSHED with the successful launch in early February of her West Country Antiques Fair at Powderham Castle, near Exeter, Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs moves north this weekend to her established Cheshire County Antiques Fair, which will be held at Arley Hall, near Knutsford from March 12 to 14.

Local trade fare particularly well at Powderham: TWO weeks ago, when Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs promised her new West Country Antiques Fair at Powderham Castle, near Exeter, would be “an antiques event of a quality not seen before in the West Country”, I must admit I thought that a very bold claim indeed.

Combining exotic subject matter with rarity value, figures of the Victorian lion-tamer Isaac Van Amburgh are among the most desirable of all Staffordshire portrait figures.

A DRAWING by E.H. Shepard of Winnie the Pooh playing a balalaika raised bidding on a third edition of The House at Pooh Corner to £7000 in the Greenslade Taylor Hunt sale of November 13 – and although nothing else in the 825-lot Taunton catalogue came remotely close to that in financial terms, a few other lots deserve mention.