Gloucestershire

Visitors to London at the end of the 17th century needed to take care: banditts, adamtilers and fencing-cullies were out looking to prey on unwitting buzzards, fat culls and fuddlecaps.

Last August, Caitlin Riley, rare book specialist at Bristol and Bath-based Auctioneum, was making headlines around the world.

This marble sculpture of Napoleon as Caesar is based on a model created by the French neoclassicist Antoine-Denis Chaudet for the Sèvres porcelain manufactory in 1810.

A rare Georgian brass microscope by Edinburgh maker John Clark will join an important Dutch collection after its sale in the Cotswolds.

Police are appealing for information after many identifiable pieces of antique jewellery were stolen during a robbery in the Cotswolds.

The Zena Kwiatkowski Corrigan collection of tiles was sold by Kinghams (26% buyer’s premium) in Moreton-in-Marsh over 291 lots on October 30.

Although termed strawberry dishes, the classic early Georgian plain serving dish with raised fluted sides and a scalloped rim, were used for a variety of purposes.

Some of the earliest dolls’ houses are also referred to as baby houses, although they were more like detailed miniature houses and it is said that the aim was not play but to reflect riches.

Auctions with half an eye on the gift-giving season proliferate throughout late November and early December.

On November 25, Gloucestershire auction house Chorley’s is selling the personal collection of Ray Leigh (1928-2025), one of the more significant figures in post-war British design.

A couple of intriguing pictures offered as ‘attributed to’ major artists drew interest at Wotton Auction Rooms’ (20% buyer’s premium) latest quarterly fine art sale.

Gloucestershire auctioneers Dominic Winter posted a new house record last week when a violin used by Albert Einstein during his late teens and early adult life hammered for £860,000.

A recent sale at Harper Field (20% buyer’s premium) in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, included a weathered marble figure of a Roman emperor in armour.

Having missed its usual August event while the venue was refurbished, The Cotswolds Decorative, Antiques & Art Fair returns for the second time this year to Westonbirt School.

A lively antiques and collectables market has run weekly for the past 40 years in Cirencester’s 19th century Corn Hall in the centre of the town.

A recent sale at The Cotswold Auction Company (24% buyer’s premium) in Cirencester included three famille rose porcelain abstinence plaques.

Campaign furniture specialist Christopher Clarke Antiques has broadened its horizons for its next exhibition and is focusing on travel illustrations.