Gloucestershire

Would you rather a blue or a bronze BAFTA? Even if you haven’t made a stand-out screen performance this year – and even if you didn’t know a blue BAFTA was an option – they could still be yours.

Discovered as a ‘box of bits’ in the late 1960s when clearing the attic of a London residence, a ‘First Period’ lantern clock was placed in storage until being put back together in the 1980s.

Elements of a well-documented Empire period Sèvres dinner and dessert service surfaced at Kinghams (26% buyer’s premium) in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, on March 4.

A diminutive but rare mid-17th century needlework picture sold for £11,000 in Tennants’ (24% buyer’s premium) latest Fashion, Costume and Textiles Sale.

A decade ago V&A curators used an X-ray to discover what was inside a vintage Christmas cracker made in the 1920s by the Tom Smith company without having to actually pull it. This revealed a small chocolate.

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.