Lawrences of Crewkerne

English Civil War material is of particular note in a broad-ranging Somerset auction

The Old Bill motorcar mascot was a popular item during and after the Great War.

“Germany calling, Germany calling” were the chilling opening words spoken by the upper-class British accent of William Joyce – Lord Haw Haw – and other presenters in propaganda radio broadcasts from Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

A selection of silver lots coming up in the salerooms.

Better by a distance than nine similar items, a mid-17th century wainscot chair offered by Lawrences (25% buyer’s premium) in Crewkerne demonstrated the yawning price gap between the acceptable and the desirable in the early oak market.

Somerset auction shows how bidders are very sensitive to how works are estimated.

One notable consequence of the growing prevalence of charity shops on the high street is that auctioneers are receiving more and more items that these organisations want to check in case they are valuable.

Under forthcoming UK ivory legislation, there will be no legitimate market for bronze and ivory Art Deco figures.

A rare pair of bookends by Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson attracted huge interest and a remarkable £10,000 winning bid at Lawrences of Crewkerne.

Two musical boxes catching the eye and ear among the small vertu sections at summer silver sales.

Two collections assembled since the late 1960s enthuse a fresh generation of buyers.

Opening the antique ceramics section of Lawrences’ (25% buyer’s premium) four-day sale in Crewkerne was the William Farrar Jackson collection of commemorative English pottery.

At an uncertain time bidders are assertive when the best and not the rest comes up at auction.

Satirical magazine Private Eye once ran a series highlighting the fatuity of interviews by supposedly asking famous names their feelings towards spoons, there being nothing more mundane or less worthy of comment. But the appeal of an antique spoon to the cognoscenti is not difficult to appreciate.

On account of its relative scarcity, all Irish silver carries a premium. It is the pieces made in small provincial centres that are most highly prized.