Pick of the Week

A 14th or 15th century Persian mirror that emerged at auction in Lincolnshire took a five-figure sum.

While the achievement of Manchester City players in winning three titles in consecutive seasons – with a treble – is certainly admirable, spare a thought for Tom Wilson, a footballer of a much earlier era.

As timing goes, the sale date for an album of handwritten letters, photographs and ephemera related to Sophia Duleep Singh (1876-1948) could not have been much better.

Leading the sale at Dominic Winter on May 17 was a highly unusual Elizabethan manuscript treatise on cheese and cheese making.

It is traditional in Russia for important, respected or admired guests to be greeted with an offering of bread and salt.

In January this year three photos of a salt glaze stoneware jar appeared on the Facebook feed of the Oxfordshire Antique Bottle Collecting Club.

This rare rock and pop poster advertises a performance by ‘Bazooka Joe’ with ‘Support Band’ at the common room of St Martin’s Art School on November 6, 1975. Entrance was 50p.

A garnet intaglio ring was bid to 450-times estimate at an auction in Birmingham after speculation that it could be one of the ‘lost’ Marlborough gems.

Before the familiar image of a lady in tall black hat and shawl took hold, the stereotype of Welsh identity was Shon-Ap-Morgan or Poor Taff.

This military tunic was worn by the English soldier and friend of the Romantic poets Edward John Trelawny during the Greek War of Independence.

The series of relatively austere wares made by Moorcroft in the 1930s are, today at least, not the factory’s most commercial designs.

An original owner of considerable military renown made the difference when a c.1820 gold fob seal came up for auction in London on March 14.

A clue to the great appeal of this stoneware whisky bottle is the name of a small settlement on the banks of the Forth estuary.

Since the days of Magna Carta, it was thought the best way to avoid a fraudulent measure was to have a verified ‘standard’ against which all others could be judged.

Elements of an important Naples porcelain service made after the Battle of the Nile have resurfaced at auction in the US.

A cache of material from descendants of the Starbuck family, a Quaker whaling family influential in both the abolitionist movement and the founding of Nantucket as a whaling centre, was the highlight of Catherine Southon’s sale on February 8.

The completion of the US transcontinental railroad in 1869 was the marvel of its age.

A 19th century folk art painting of one black and one white child depicted together as equals has been purchased at auction by art dealer Philip Mould.

A drawing of Toussaint Louverture (c.1743-1803), a leader of the Haitian Revolution, has sold from London’s Nonesuch Gallery to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Models produced for promotional purposes usually benefit from considerable rarity value and so it proved when a Dinky toy came up for auction at Stockton-on-Tees saleroom Vectis.