UK

A portrait of air vice-marshal James Edgar ‘Johnnie’ Johnson has been donated to the RAF Club in London after being sold by dealer MacConnal-Mason.

Part of a consignment from a deceased estate in Totnes, this stoneware bowl by red-hot studio pottery favourite Dame Lucie Rie was a near certainty to exceed the £6000-9000 estimate when Chudleigh auction house Michael J Bowman (17.5% buyer’s premium) received a £20,000 commission bid from Japan ahead of the September 23 Devon sale.

Ed Lake works at Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers, specialist in 18th and 19th century English literature and history. His parents opened the business in 1969 and it is based in Great Russell Street, across from the British Museum. The shop’s ground floor has been renovated to recreate a 19th-century bookshop.

One of the most sought-after models in the jukebox world is the Wurlitzer Peacock Type 850, designed by Paul Fueller in 1941. It is generally considered the biggest, the showiest and ‘most jukeboxy’ jukebox of them all.

John Alexander (1686-1766) was the son of a doctor in Aberdeen and the great-grandson of the famous artist George Jamesone.

Hansons Auctioneers in Etwall, Derbyshire sold a Yongzheng (1723-35) mark and period dish for £230,000 (plus premium) on September 29.

Leading UK artists have donated works for an auction raising funds to establish a national centre for the artist Thomas Gainsborough.

Modern sculpture, including a small rediscovered marine ivory piece by Eric Gill (1882-1940), took centre stage at Duke’s (22% buyer’s premium) in Dorset.

A pair of watercolours depicting Berwick-upon-Tweed, the northern-most town in England, turned up at Batemans (20% buyer’s premium) on September 2.

It’s taken more than a year to materialise but at last, the long-awaited consultation on ivory has arrived.

A nude painting by the 19th century English artist William Etty (1787-1849) starred in Sworders’ (22% buyer’s premium) sale in Essex. The 2ft 2in x 19in (66 x 49cm) oil on panel shows a naked woman in a wooded landscape, her head and body turned away from the viewer.

Trading as Hoof Brocante, Adrian Higham is among the most genial of men.

“If you lived here you could make it absolutely divine,” wrote author Virginia Woolf to her sister Vanessa Bell in 1916.

An unusual medals sale has led to an unusual outcome. An application is to be made to export from Canada the Victoria Cross group won by heroic Lieutenant Colonel David Currie after it was bought by a British private collector.

Early on at the recent LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair (15-20 September), Charles Wallrock of Wick Antiques met a new client.

This original case of five silver catheters and three urethral sounds marked for the London maker J Millikan might be a strange offering as a prize outside medical circles.

Cheap sterling can help bring in the foreign buyers – but only if auctioneers can deliver the right goods. These were much in evidence at Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) sale at Prinknash Abbey on September 13-14.

“Only a Rizla paper between them,” is what judge Philip Arnold declared as he announced the winner of the 2017 NAVA Propertymark Novice Auctioneer of the year.

West Hall, located on the outskirts of Long Burton a few miles south of Sherborne, is an imposing stone-built manor house. The ancient iron-studded front door still bears the axe marks made by Oliver Cromwell’s Roundheads in the English Civil War as they tried to beat down the door. They suspected Charles I may have been hiding inside.

A collection of early 20th century Chinese silver attracted wide interest at Catherine Southon’s (18% buyer’s premium) September 6 sale at Selsdon, south London.