Charterhouse

On a single day in 1919 the Imperial German Navy achieved the impressive feat of sinking 52 vessels. Unfortunately, they were its own ships.

A collection of Doulton from a West Country farmhouse is included in the Charterhouse July 8-9 auction in Sherborne, Dorset.

With all 80 lots getting away – 79 to a single UK collector – a group of walking sticks totalled more than £40,000 at Charterhouse (25% buyer’s premium).

Label, listed provenance and technical qualities lead to a contest to land a possible big Guercino catch.

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.

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

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

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).

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”.

Our weekly selection from salerooms.