South-west England

If you are green fingered but also like getting your hands on antiques, then Louise Allen and Piers Newth’s stall at the 'RHS Chelsea Flower Show' in London from May 20-24 will be of great appeal.

Consigned from a private collection in Oxfordshire, a Wanli (1572-1620) mark and period blue and white jardinière sold for £40,000 at Chorley’s (25% buyer’s premium).

The Age of Oak sale at Woolley & Wallis (26% buyer’s premium) on April 9 was built around the collection formed by antiques dealers Bruce and Margaret Howard.

An RAF uniform, log book and medals that belonged to one of ‘The Few’ was a highlight when Cornish saleroom Lay’s (21% buyer’s premium) dispersed the contents of Flambards theme park.

An intriguing collection that came from a house of a well-connected Devon family caused a stir when it emerged at Exeter saleroom Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (26/25% buyer’s premium).

A new addition to the permanent collection of the Reform Club on Pall Mall is a William IV Scottish eight-day painted dial longcase.

A notable collection of textiles from English aristocrat and society hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938) attracted considerable interest at Dominic Winter (22% buyer’s premium) in Cirencester.

Fragment found in an attic with receipt for £25 now sells for £39,000 hammer price

A diminutive Quaker pin cushion made to raise funds for a pioneering mental health hospital in York has sold for a remarkable sum at Woolley & Wallis.

Whatever interior statement one hopes to achieve, it is so often the furniture that really makes a room.

A number of hall chairs of this idiosyncratic type from the early years of the ‘age of mahogany’ are known and have appeared on the market.

Estimated at £500-800, this large Vauxhall salt-glazed stoneware tavern mug sold for £3400 at Moore Allen & Innocent (21% buyer’s premium) in Cirencester, Gloucestershire.

One of perhaps only two known ruby red versions of the Whitefriars Banjo vase sold for £17,200 in Devon on April 9.

Launched in 2019 as an annual event but biannual since 2022, such is its appeal to both dealers and visitors, the first of this year’s antiques and decorative fairs held in the Georgian interior of Enys House runs on Saturday and Sunday, April 26-27.

Created shortly after the 1830 Revolution, when Louis Philippe ruled as ‘king of the French’, the ‘Service de la Chevalerie’ was a great example of romantic historicism.

One of the highest prices for a figurative work by Maxwell Ashby Armfield (1881-1972) came at an early spring sale at Plymouth Auction Rooms (20% buyer’s premium).

Among the earliest examples of Australian gold rush jewellery are the simple signet rings sold to miners in the settlement of Ballarat in the 1850s as a memento of the boomtown days.

As the Depression took hold, the clamour for luxury goods in tropical hardwoods, silver and shagreen was replaced by a demand for less expensive consumer goods that combined the modern aesthetic with new materials and industrial production.

New Zealand-born architect Keith Murray (1892-1981) began to make designs for Wedgwood on a commercial basis in 1933, joining a stable of designers that included Daisy Makeig-Jones and John Skeaping.