Big, brown, and once again rather beautiful...

A 7ft by 10ft (2.13m x 3.04m) Victorian mahog-any sideboard was an example. Finely carved to the mirror surround with leafage scrolls and fruiting vines, it had an inverted breakfront base with panelled doors enclosing a cellaret and sold on its top estimate £2000.

Another hefty piece of mahogany – a 7ft 8in (2.34m) wide George IV pedestal sideboard featured rather incongruous and almost certainly later inlaid classical oval urn medallions to the pedestals. Nevertheless the piece, with low raised back, fitted cutlery drawers and sliding compartments below four drawers and two cupboards, took £3100 from a Worcestershire buyer.

Among smaller pieces was an inlaid work table signed A.L. Majorelle. It had a shaped rectangular top decorated with wisteria and berry inlay and with a fitted frieze drawer on slender sinuous supports. Estimated at £800-1200 the 2ft 5in by 21in (73 x 53cm) table took £1550 from an Oxfordshire buyer.

Elsewhere, vernacular oak proved its continued popularity when an 18th century bureau, 3ft 9in (45cm) wide, with a matched panelled bookcase to the upper section and on ogee bracket feet fell at £1900 to a Northern buyer.

However, it was a much smaller piece altogether which attracted the highest price of the two-day dispersal – an 8in (20cm) 17th century salt-glaze mug with silver rim engraved God Save King William 1697 and marked with the initials T.C. & R.C. plus the maker’s mark – an H intersected with a C. It had been excellently preserved and a number of bidders believed the mug to be even earlier than the engraving date, which may have fuelled the enthusiastic bidding to the £4600 (treble the mid-estimate) offered by a London specialist.

The large militaria section, the majority of which came from two Welsh deceased estates (as did the bulk of the other material in the sale), brought a lot of interest but a number of below estimate results.

A Cornish buyer took home an antique Japanese sword signed to the blade by the maker and still in its original Second World War scabbard for a below estimate £500.

Among the ceramics, the Imari pattern proved predictably popular when a pair of 19th century bottles vases, 18in (46cm) high painted in two colours, left the £400-500 estimate behind to bring £720.

A number of 19th century bronzes in the classical style appealed to buyers. Attracting the most interest were a pair of bronzes depicting Mercury holding aloft a caduceus together with another unidentified figure with a trumpet. At 2ft 1in (64cm) high the figures, both on drum-shaped plinths took a mid-estimate £820.