UK

The sale of a £200,000 Chinese vase in Suffolk completed a trio of house records across the regions that belied the usually quiet auction season.

When auctioneer Tony Pratt spotted a mysterious shape in the undergrowth of a back garden in Hythe he wasn’t expecting to uncover a very large pottery bear.

A sketch attributed to John Constable (1776-1837) uncovered in a Holland Park home is to be offered at auction in Maidenhead – the latest in a string of Constable sketch discoveries.

The dealers of Tetbury who trade with the Continent are determined to work through whatever turbulence Brexit may bring. A no-deal departure, likely to result in tariffs and customs checks, would present problems for import and export of stock.

Shown below is ‘Un Baleinobus’, one of a rare series of 78 chromlitho illustrations featured on eight uncut stock cards or sheets that sold for £1000 as part of a Hansons (20% buyer’s premium) sale of July 31.

ATG's regular listing of British and Irish book auctions.

'View from the Back of 72 Bute Street' is one of the pictures by Welsh painter Charles Burton available at Martin Tinney Gallery this month.

Fine German sidelock ejectors do not feature often in the London salerooms but Gavin Gardiner’s 25% buyer’s premium) May 1 sale of sporting guns at Sotheby’s in London produced a pair that not only scored on quality but had a history to back it up.

ATG explores Tetbury’s Long Street to discover dealers evolving to lure casual buyers as well as connoisseurs

Private buying dominated as Essex saleroom Sworders (23% buyer’s premium) offered the selected contents of a Cotswold manor house.

Antiques dealer and furniture designer/maker Christopher Howe hosts a warehouse sale this autumn giving buyers access to his entire stock for the first time in his 30-year career.

Special Auction Services’ (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale in Newbury on July 9 included a wide selection of edged weapons which was topped by a mid-19th century Japanese short sword or tanto estimated at £200-300.

A Battle of Culloden period Clan MacTavish silver inlaid basket-hilted back sword sold for £4800, just below top estimate, at the Antony Cribb (22% buyer’s premium) auction on July 30.

Catalogued together with an incomplete silver propelling pencil with a bloodstone terminal, a silver Art Deco pocket lighter with a timepiece sold at £5200 (estimate £100-200) at Amersham Auction Rooms (17.5% buyer’s premium) on July 11.

The words ‘country’ and ‘brocante’ have an allure of their own as Lucy Haywood discovered when she founded the Country Brocante store in the village of Midhurst, West Sussex.

One notable consequence of the growing prevalence of charity shops on the high street is that auctioneers are receiving more and more items that these organisations want to check in case they are valuable.