Textiles

Estimated at just £30-50, a late 19th century sampler sold via thesaleroom.com for £1850 at Wotton Auction Rooms (18% buyer’s premium) in Gloucestershire. A clue to the appeal is the inscription 'M Mountain, 5 Orphan House, Ashley Down, Bristol, 1879'.

Personal items that belonged to Marie-Antoinette were the highlights of Osenat’s (20.83/18% buyer’s premium) themed sale titled Royalty at Versailles.

'Calyx (Blue)', a 1951 textile by Lucienne Day (1917-2010), sprouts with Modernist forms. Its colourful, flower-like shapes hint at the mobiles of Alexander Calder or the biomorphs of Joan Miro.

Contents of Palladian home in County Durham provide showpiece auction in Newbury

Although often overshadowed by her famous father William, May Morris (1862-1938) was herself an important figure in the British Arts & Crafts movement.

As a young man in the 1960s, British creative designer Anthony Redmile (b.1937) took the London interior design scene by storm. Although his work was hugely eclectic, he became best known for his quirky designs taken from the animal kingdom.

Long unseen material from the country home of an ancient English family brought some estimate-demolishing five-figure bids at Morphets (17.5% buyer’s premium) including a genuine sleeper.

One of the highlights of a busy week in the salerooms came at Dreweatts’ auction of the Sir William Whitfield (1920-2019) collection.

While one of the Textile Society’s important functions is holding fairs, another is its annual awards and bursaries, including a professional development award.

This damask towel measuring 3ft 5in x 2ft 5in (1m x 75cm) and decorated with wreaths of fleur de lys and a central bouquet of roses will feature in Osenat’s La Royauté à Versailles auction, to be held in Versailles on April 5.

A UK-based design studio trio last year took over the UK licence to the archive of Florence Broadhurst, an Australian designer whose whirlwind life came to a tragic end in 1977.

The latest staging of The London Antique Rug & Textile Art Fair was marked by strong sales of carpets and fewer big-ticket sales, according to organiser and exhibitor Aaron Nejad.

The London Antique Rug & Textile Art Fair (LARTA) celebrates its 10th anniversary this year on the mezzanine of the Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair in Battersea Park.

A sale of art and antiques from a Worcestershire manor house included the rare appearance at auction of two examples of Opus Anglicanum.

This rare sampler, just 6in (15cm) across, was completed by a girl from the Queens Orphan School in Van Diemen’s Land (the island of Tasmania) in 1838.

Thirty of the top textiles and tribal art dealers will be exhibiting at the 'London Antique Textiles & Tribal Art Fair' at the Hilton Olympia in Kensington High Street on Sunday, November 10.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Meg Andrews deals in antique dress and textiles and is a consultant to the Heritage Lottery and museums. She promotes textiles as hangings for interiors.

The National Museums of Scotland has been revealed as the buyer of the Storrar Coverlet – a rare woollen textile withdrawn at the 11th hour from a sale at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh in August.

The Textile Society has run antique and vintage textiles fairs in Manchester for the past 20 years with its annual London event launching in 2009. Proceeds from these 40-plus standholder events help to fund the society’s awards and bursaries.