Gloucestershire

Flightless bird walks away with a new owner as silver novelty rarities catch the eye at Kinghams

Quality and craftsmanship is rarely out of fashion.

Joseph Southall’s (1861-1944) picture Cymon and Iphigenia was probably made with the help of the artist’s chickens.

Top-seller when a collection of antiques from the estate of a descendant of one of Britain’s longest-serving chancellors of the exchequer went to auction in the Cotswolds was an oil painting “in the manner of 17th century royal portraitist Peter Lely”.

The March 3-4 sale at Chorley’s (25% buyer’s premium) in Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire, was topped by a good example of Qing imperial needlework: a yellow ground silk and metal thread cushion cover.

Bidding competition breaks out in south London for Mannerist work discovered in a west London house

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.