East Midlands

Jaguar Fairs is celebrating its 25th year in the business by launching a new one-day midweek outside antiques and vintage fair at Nottingham Racecourse.

Catalogued simply as an ‘African ceremonial tribal spear’ and estimated at £200-300, a Luba staff of office sold for an unexpected £18,500 (plus 15% buyer’s premium) at Gildings’ first sale of the new year in Market Harborough.

The sale at Kingham & Orme (20% buyer’s premium) in Evesham on December 6-7 included the second instalment of the remarkable Shennan collection of silver mustard pots, this time featuring examples made in the reigns of George IV to Victoria (1821-1901).

Arthur Swallow’s busy vintage monthly fleamarket runs at the Lincoln Showground.

Revived by Ruth and Paul Thurman last year, the former Field Dog Fairs event held in the Magnus Sports Hall in Newark under the new organisers will run on Sunday, January 26.

Rarely seen in public before, this signed 18in x 2ft (45 x 65cm) gouache is one of the earliest works by the British Modernist painter John Armstrong (1893-1973).

This Victorian mother-of-pearl and abalone shell card case is carved with a portrait of George Lord Byron, the most flamboyant and notorious of the major English Romantic poets.

The sale at flood-hit Bamfords (21% buyer’s premium) on October 30 included chattels from the estate of Lady Elizabeth Georgiana Alice Cavendish (1926-2018), daughter of the 10th Duke of Devonshire of nearby Chatsworth House.

Sellers and buyers hit the ground running to make the most of the early-morning bargains

Part toy, part biscuit tin, the crossover appeal of a 1929 Huntley & Palmers product helped it to star at Hansons’ (20% buyer’s premium) five-day 2100-lot marathon antiques and collectors sale.

A good-quality violin linked to the German maker Jacobus Stainer (1619-83) led a group of previously overlooked musical instruments in a Towcester auction.

American naval expertise and gallantry came as a big shock to the British, who had become used to the Royal Navy ruling the waves.

Selling at some 20 times the estimate, a 19th century mahogany-cased music box was the surprise success at Batemans’ (20% buyer’s premium) sale at Stamford on October 5.

The sale at Knights Sporting Auctions in Leicester on November 2-3 includes a number of items previously sold by Christie’s as duplicates from the library of the Marylebone Cricket Club in 2010.

Two modestly estimated watercolours by the Victorian ornithological painter Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935) emerged as the star sellers in an auction in South Yorkshire.

A State Porcelain Factory figure by Natalina Danko (1892-1943) emerged at auction in Grantham earlier this month.

Nottingham auction house Mellors & Kirk (20% buyer’s premium) added to the cautiously feel-good mood created by some highly successful autumn sales in the provinces when strong private buying brought impressive results across the board.