South-west England

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.

With this year marking the 100th anninversary of the exhibition that gave Art Deco its name, we report on the British designers whose creations appear on the market

With the first CADA fair to be held in Chelsea receiving positive feedback (see story also in this edition), we now look ahead to a much more local event available for traders

A sword presented to one of only three Jewish winners of the Victoria Cross in the Second World War has sold for a hammer price of £7200 at Plymouth saleroom Eldreds (20% buyer’s premium).

‘Tutti Frutti’ is the name given to Cartier’s range of brightly coloured jewels in the Indian style from the 1920s-30s.

Before independence in 1947, the Naga hill tribes of north-east India were considered an exotic society, radically different in culture and beliefs from the better-known Hindu peoples of the plains and renowned for their fierce resistance to British rule.

A Cartier Egyptian revival jewel, previously known only from an advert that appeared in The Illustrated London News in the 1920s, sold for £55,000 at Woolley & Wallis (26% buyer’s premium).

A Georgian silver coffee pot that once formed part of the silver at the White House has emerged for sale in Gloucestershire.

A single-owner private collection of pre-Second World War Bassett-Lowke maritime electric, motor, clockwork and live steam model boats is for sale on April 11-12.