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A PORTISHEAD parent proved no dummy when he unearthed two Regency library globes at his child’s school. The unusually large globes, by renowned London maker Cary, were discovered under the floorboards of local Bristol school, Portishead Primary, and went on to form the stellar entry in this 396-lot collectors sale.

Exceptional subjects still have the capacity to fetch exceptional prices, as the Bury St Edmunds auctioneers Lacy Scott & Knight (10% buyer’s premium) discovered when this unsigned and unattributed 19th century watercolour came under the hammer on September 20 with an estimate of £250-400.

WITH a £120,000 total from some 500 lots catering for most areas of antiques, the September 18 sale held by Douglas Ross (15% buyer’s premium) at Woburn was a sound, if unspectacular, start to the autumn season for the Bedfordshire rooms.

And now for something completely different...A high-rise flat on the outskirts of Glasgow is not the place one would expect to find works of art by the celebrated firm of Fabergé but that was the origin of the finely crafted photograph frame, right, offered on September 26 by Glasgow auctioneers McTears (15% buyer’s premium).

High quality mahogany carcase furniture continues to transcend any malaise experienced at other levels of the furniture market. The final lot of a small but nicely formed sale conducted by Finan & Co. at the Old Ship Hotel in Mere, Wiltshire on October 4 was this fretwork and blind fret decorated Chippendale-style and period mahogany library bookcase.

An early autumn mixed hors d’oeuvres of silver and European ceramics went under the hammer at Sotheby’s Olympia (20/12% buyer’s premium) on October 2. Roughly two-thirds of the 375 lots were devoted to silver and vertu, and the remaining third to ceramics, but it was the latter that provided half of the ten highest prices, including what proved to be very much the top lot of the day.

First introduced c.1809, the ‘Caramanian’ series represent one of Spode’s most popular early 19th century pattern ranges.