Auctions

Herefordshire was judged a little too remote for most Midlands industrialists seeking a rural retreat in the Arts and Crafts idiom.

A medal given to a remarkable sailor who was given the honour of conveying Napoleon to exile in Elba in 1813 as a reward for his daring exploits in the Royal Navy has made a record price.

For the second time in a decade, on August 10, Heritage in Dallas will offer for sale the prototype of the original GI Joe figure.

The British government has placed a temporary export bar on a rare piece of jewellery that belonged to Jane Austen.

While there were plenty of high-end clocks on offer in the London auction rooms and fairs over the summer season, Bonhams were the only house to offer dedicated clock sales.

Arousing more immediate interest than anything when Shapes’ catalogue went online, this 16in (40cm) tall Deco period Poole pottery vase bore the impressed mark of Carter Stabler and Adams and the monogram of Truda Carter.

The sale of Fine Clocks, Barometers and Scientific Instruments conducted by Dreweatts at Donnington Priory on September 4 will include this well-documented William and Mary brass lantern clock by Thomas Veale of Chew Magna.

The series of electroplated teapots designed by Christopher Dresser and made by James Dixon & Sons in 1879 rank among the great moments of the Aesthetic movement – and 19th century art as a whole.

At Dreweatts’ first stand-alone sale of jewellery in London this version of Salvador Dalí’s ‘The Eye Of Time’ (El Ojo Del Tempo) brooch sold for £75,000.

To great publicity last November Martel Maides of Guernsey sold a collection of Fijian cannibal forks for close to £30,000. They were the property of a local collector, who had bought them privately in the North Midlands three or four decades ago – the same vendor who entered an Aboriginal parrying shield to the auctioneer’s sale last month with hopes of £3000-4000.

An extraordinary relic of the African slave trade was among the headline lots from a three-day sale held by Lockdales in Martlesham Heath near Ipswich last month.

The most stunning price of London’s summer auction season came at Christie’s last week when the competition that emerged on ‘Love among the Ruins’ by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98) was one of the strongest ever seen for a Victorian picture.

Drawn from life at Nelson’s home, Merton, just weeks before the Battle of Trafalgar, this pastel portrait by the marine artist John Whichelo sold for £52,000 at Sotheby’s.

An extraordinary cache of 2794 Victorian farthings, all dated 1890, of the same type, and generally all in glorious mint state, have been consigned as lot 680 to Woolley & Wallis’s upcoming Silver and Collectors’ sale in Salisbury.

Eton College is now the new home of the world’s most expensive football programme.

David Gonzalez, a builder and decorator in Hoffman, Minnesota, bought a small house on his own account for $10,100 and set to work on fixing it up for re-sale. Then he took down one of the walls and revealed a hidden treasure.

Strong competition for a number of key works gave a major lift to the latest round of Old Master auctions in London.

Business is best if you are at the top of the tree, according to the latest survey published by the British Antique Dealers’ Association.

This remarkable 1773 longcase clock by Hugh Lough of Penrith proved the top-selling lot at Mitchells of Cockermouth when it sold at £19,000.

This c.1614 polychrome alabaster sculpture lost from a London church during the Blitz has been returned to its original location.