A group of manuscripts that featured letters from 12 Nobel Prize-winning scientists was offered as part of Sworders’ (25% buyer’s premium) Books and Maps timed online sale ending on November 2.

The 165.024 reference Omega Seamaster 300 was one of the most robust and practical dive watches of the Sixties.

Our selection of stand-out lots from 18 upcoming auctions

Philippe Auguste Courvoisier (1803-73), a member of the famed Courvoisier family of Swiss watchmakers, specialised in the production of watches with portraits of 19th century royalty, such as Queen Victoria, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte or, in the case of watches sold in London and Stuttgart, the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmecid I.

Jean Rousseau (1606-84) came from a renowned watchmaking family that settled in Geneva, the cradle for prosecuted French Protestants in the 1630s.

‘Settle bindings’ are the name given to a small number of surviving books published between c.1700-23 by Elkanah Settle (1648-1724).

Pocket watches owned by Horatio Nelson, Thomas Hardy and Cuthbert Collingwood and consulted throughout the Battle of Trafalgar come for sale next month.

Auctions with half an eye on the gift-giving season proliferate throughout late November and early December.

The sale of Chinese and other Asian Works of Art at Semley Auctioneers in Shaftesbury, Dorset, included the largest known group of works by the artist Mrs H Clark.

Important Irish mahogany furniture returned to market on November 11 when Brunk Auctions in North Carolina sold the so-called Mississippi Rococo collection of Jerold D Krouse.

On November 25, Gloucestershire auction house Chorley’s is selling the personal collection of Ray Leigh (1928-2025), one of the more significant figures in post-war British design.

Lovers’ eyes became a la mode from c.1790 and remained fashionable in the courts and affluent families of England, Russia, France and North America until the early 1830s.

Our selection of lots from 17 upcoming auctions

The gold rush that followed the discovery of significant deposits in New South Wales and Victoria in 1851, was a catalyst for the first colonial jewellery expressing an Australian identify.

Norman Grant, a student of David Hodge at Gray’s School of Art, began to design and make jewellery from his garden shed in the late 1960s.

This small silver ‘V for Victory’ pendant made by the London firm of John Pinches Medallists for Cartier London is engraved Winston Churchill 1951-1955.

One of the eight York Rose brooches given by Prince Albert (later George VI) to the bridesmaids who attended his marriage to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother) in 1923, will be offered at Noonans in Mayfair on November 25.

Newbury auction house Dreweatts (27% buyer’s premium) held a sale last month titled Syrie Maugham: A Family Collection, offering items from the interior designer and her descendants.