Lawrences of Crewkerne

In a recent Financial Times article titled 'Dangerous baubles for boys', historian and style journalist Nick Foulkes commented that a friend had “described my hands as looking like a cabinet of curiosities trying to emulate a pair of knuckledusters”.

In demand at home and abroad during his lifetime, the eminent miniaturist John Smart was an international draw at a trio of sales.

Sold for £16,000 in a September 23 sale was an album of 41 watercolour studies of birds produced by William Weston Young (1776-1847).

Fellows’ Fine Jewellery sale in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter on September 30 includes an extraordinary collection of 63 mourning rings.

Although condition remains a pivotal factor in the Old Master market, a number of lots sold recently in the UK regions suggest increasing interest for works that represent a promising restoration project.

A group of works by painter, printmaker and war artist Edward Ardizzone (1900-79) was offered at Lawrences’ latest picture sale in Crewkerne, with eight lots coming from the artist’s family.

Distinctive steeple cups are scarce but an Elizabethan silver example came to market at a Somerset auction house

Books and periodicals from the John Warburton motoring library featured in a May 25 sale presented by Transport Collector Auctions & Lawrences (25% buyer’s premium) in the latter’s Crewkerne salerooms.

The sale of 19th and 20th Century Ceramics at Lawrences in Crewkerne on July 22 includes two coil-built terracotta vessels by the Kenyan-born potter Dame Magdalene Odundo (b.1950).

The Silver & Vertu sale at Lawrences in Crewkerne on July 20 includes this 17in (42cm) high Elizabeth I steeple cup and cover with the maker’s mark AB conjoined, London 1602.

Lawrences of Crewkerne is offering a charming picture of two dogs on July 21 that the auction house last sold in the 1950s.

Estimated at just £80-150, a Queen Anne or George I period needlework sampler sold for £10,000 via thesaleroom.com at Lawrences (25% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne.

The popularity of the tiara, that reached its peak in the decades before the onset of the First World War when diamonds from South Africa were in plentiful supply, has fluctuated across the 20th century in line with prosperity and fashion.

Four early pieces of Newcastle plate and a selection of other silver rarities sold at auction this autumn

Our weekly selection from salerooms.

As hugely personal items and of relatively small melt value, spoons represent the great majority of English domestic silver items surviving from the pre-civil war period.

This curious object is the forerunner of a million Christmas cracker prizes. Made in gold and silver, c.1830, the ‘ring’ chased with flowers includes a tiny pin hole which allows a jet of water to be squirted into the face of an unsuspecting admirer via a syringe-like plunger that can be concealed in the palm.

Whisky has been a booming market in recent years, says Simon Jones, associate director at Lawrences (25% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne.

Principal attraction in a Crewkerne book sale at Lawrences (25% buyers premium) was the Browning family archive that featured as Pick of the Week in ATG No 2459, but three other items from that 370 lot sale are noted here.