Charterhouse

This sailor’s walking cane below displays many elements of the scrimshander’s art: a whalebone shaft carved with spiral fluting, collars inlaid with shell from the hawksbill turtle and a handle carved as a dove from the tooth of a sperm whale.

The contents of a country house in Exmouth turned up not one but two large watercolours by Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935), the pre-eminent British painter of ornithological subjects.

Estimated at £150-200, this Georgian dial clock stormed to £4800 at Charterhouse (25% buyer’s premium) in Sherborne. Two collectors made much of the bidding.

The German-born watercolourist and musician John Baptist Malchair (c.1730-1812) was a key figure in 18th century Oxford.

Consignments from vendors with a close connection to famous artists are always a welcome boon for any auction.

Found in the roof space of a Devon cottage, an oil painting of a pointer dog in an open field sold for £3400 at Sherborne saleroom Charterhouse (25% buyer’s premium).

Items from the estate of the Dame Elisabeth Frink (1930-93) were included in the Charterhouse (25% buyer’s premium) sale in Sherborne, Dorset, on November 14-15.

In the resilient Beswick market, collectors paid high prices for some rarities – even modern prototypes – at autumn sales.

Estimated at £100-150, this mid-20th century portrait of a fashionably dressed young woman attracted a flurry of bids at Sherborne saleroom Charterhouse (25% buyer’s premium).

Our weekly selection from salerooms.

Landscape painter Sidney Richard Percy (1821-86) is described in Christopher Wood’s Dictionary of Victorian Painters as “a prolific and variable painter, and his prices vary accordingly”.

Works by Namikawa Yasuyuki underline how buyers are aiming at the very best when it comes to the Japanese market ahead of a series of UK sales.