UK

The New Year is traditionally quiet in the salerooms but the 1800-lot Cheetham collection generated some real excitement at Adam Partridge (18% buyer’s premium) in Macclesfield.

Holt’s (25/20% buyer’s premium) sale in London on December 14 included two prime examples of weapons designed to get their owners out of a tight corner.

Portable lighters appeared in the early 20th century, with Dunhill being the most collectable name and watch lighters regarded as most covetable.

Northcote Road is a half-mile stretch of road which runs between Clapham and Battersea in south London which is well-known for chain restaurants and bars. It is also renowned, though, for its independent businesses, some of which have been there for 30 years.

An Arctic Medal with a provenance indicating it was awarded to a member of the doomed Franklin Expedition which vanished searching for the elusive Northwest Passage has surfaced at a Surrey auction house.

A pastel portrait of a fashionable young Georgian woman in an ostrich feather hat and blue coat with her dog topped the picture section at Lincolnshire saleroom Golding Young & Mawer (20% buyer’s premium).

More than 100 paintings owned by the Royal Society of Marine Artists are to be sold at auction in Norfolk.

A reminder of the dramatic drop in demand over recent decades for Victorian landscapes was evident in Gloucestershire where two such oils by Sidney Richard Percy (1822-86) went under the hammer.

A complete suit of well-matched period armour is rare indeed, so there was no doubting the star of Bonhams’ (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale in London.

A small painting by Scottish artist Robert Gemmell Hutchison (1855- 1936) took a mid-estimate £6000 at Surrey saleroom John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium).

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.