Print Edition

Our weekly selection from salerooms.

Madeleine Neave, curator of The Antique Breadboard Museum, has published a book describing her extensive collection of boards, butter knives and butter churners.

This rare sampler, just 6in (15cm) across, was completed by a girl from the Queens Orphan School in Van Diemen’s Land (the island of Tasmania) in 1838.

Exuding the exuberant confidence of pre-1914 Britain, this 21in (52cm) long silver table centrepiece, below, was a natural target for the London trade at the Anthemion (17.5% buyer’s premium) November 20 sale in Cardiff.

When this portrait of a young woman was first exhibited in the early 1930s, critics remarked on its “intensity and vital quality”, “the charming head” and the “wonderful life-like expression”.

Our weekly selection from salerooms.

As with so many other businesses, art and antiques dealerships go into overdrive for the intense selling period up to Christmas. Here is a selection of five items from exhibitions and the latest catalogues.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Losses narrowed for stamps, coins and medals business Stanley Gibbons in the six months to September 30.

Old Masters are much to the fore in the calendar across Europe at this time in the auction season.

One of the highest-ever totals for an art auction in Ireland was set last week when the sale of the Ernie O’Malley collection held by Whyte’s of Dublin in association with Christie’s raised a premiuminclusive total of €5.42m (£4.65m).

Personal devotional prayer books, known as a Book of Hours, were popular among the wealthy and powerful in late medieval Europe. Illuminated with miniature paintings depicting the life of Christ, the Virgin Mary and saints, they were sometimes personalised for the patrons who commissioned them.

On Friday, November 29, Michael Bloomstein of Brighton was paying the following for bulk scrap against a gold fix of: $1456.35 / €1324.28 / £1129.55

Kelly Ross runs The Art Stable specialising in Contemporary and 20th century British painting, prints and ceramics.

One of the rarest pieces in Suffolk House Antiques’ Christmas selling exhibition is a Georgian candle stand in fruitwood and elm. The back would have protected the flame so that the person using it would have uninterrupted light even in a draughty house. Examples bearing the original backs do not always show up intact.

Copenhagen auction house Bruun Rasmussen has set an auction record for any painting sold in Denmark.

The Bordoni and the Luini were not the only strong results achieved in the Drouot auction centre in the November sales.

IACF has announced a change to the three-day antiques and collectors’ fairs held in Shepton Mallet at the Royal Bath and West Showground five times a year.

Invented in the 19th century but outmoded by word processors then computers, typewriters are now having a resurgence in the collecting world.

The height of fashion nearly three centuries ago, this 18th century doll’s dress caught the eye at C&T’s (20% buyer’s premium) specialist sale in Tunbridge Wells.