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Selling just short of the auction record, this 10in (26cm) tall stoneware pot, below, by John Ward (b.1938) went to an online bidder on thesaleroom.com at £17,500 at Rogers Jones (20% buyer’s premium) in Cardiff.

Given current market conditions, watercolours can often be ‘the poor relation’ when it comes to mixed category picture sales. But examples benefitting from fine condition, colouring or execution, or a combination of these key factors, can lead to a very different outcome.

Slow and steady. That, dealers reported, was the general course of sales at the recent British Antique Dealers’ Association (BADA) fair.

One says Scottish rather than Scotch except when one is referring to the spirit – or indeed, motor spirit as evident at the Edinburgh rooms of Thomson Roddick Scottish Auctions (17.5% buyer’s premium).

Three more modestly valued works drawing attention at Woolley & Wallis

Panter & Hall holds an exhibition of the works of Alberto Morrocco (1917-1998) in its Pall Mall gallery this month.

A painting of Farnham High Street from 1794 by a little-known artist fetched a not-so-little £8500 at Woolley & Wallis.

The BBC has put the production of antiques game show Bargain Hunt out to tender for a two-year contract, despite speculation that the long-running programme, now in its 50th series, would be axed in a drive to boost the quality of daytime TV output.

Having for decades been like one of those obscure religions in which passionate believers go about their business to the benign bemusement of everyone else, studio pottery is winning converts by the day.

Harking back to when the Netherlands was a powerful player in the tea trade, a rare, early 18th century silver caddy attracted international interest at Halls (20% buyer’s premium) of Shrewsbury.

Made by William Selwood (1607-53), one of London’s finest clockmakers before the ‘Golden Age’, this 16½in (42cm) mid-17th century brass lantern clock topped Ewbank’s (22.5% buyer’s premium) spring sale in Send.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Marines and seascapes were a strong feature of Woolley & Wallis’ latest picture sale and, while there were plenty of affordable works on offer (see separate story), the sale was led by one of the larger works by a well-recognised name.

In a career of remarkable highs and lows, incorporating high political office, financial scandal and near bankruptcy, enormous success as a novelist and imprisonment for perjury during a libel case that he had won years earlier, Jeffrey Archer has himself been the subject of many a caricature and cartoon.

At some point in its life, an early photographically illustrated work on the art of wood turning offered in a recent Exeter sale had been converted for use as a postcard album, but it still sold for a four-times estimate £4300.

During the later decades of the 20th century, post-war British artist Alan Davie (1920-2014) fell into relative obscurity. However, recent months have been eventful for the painter’s legacy.

The 96-lot section of studio pottery offered at Woolley & Wallis’ (25% buyer’s premium) wide-ranging ceramics sale at Salisbury on March 21 included a private collection of the work of David Leach (1911-2005) and Walter Keeler (b.1942).

A collection of Outsider art produced in a former psychiatric hospital in north London will be offered for sale at Edinburgh auction house Lyon & Turnbull.