East Midlands

This Volvo PV 444 diecast toy is by the Swedish toy distributor Gösta Norén.

Golding Young & Mawer is to offer the untouched collection of a Warwickshire country house at the end of the month.

Tom Parry runs Chester’s Farm Antiques in Nottinghamshire and specialises in decorative arts, including ceramics, jewellery and silver.

A recent fine art auction at Hansons (25% buyer’s premium) included a once magnificent Qianlong (1735-99) copper-red and underglaze blue lantern vase.

The unusual Chinese porcelain model (pictured below) forms the shape of a lingzhi stem vividly enamelled with a blend of green, blue and pink glazes. It measures 9in (23cm) high and carries a Qianlong (1736-95) mark.

An item of local interest to bidders at Bamfords in Derby was this 18th century account book for Radbourne Hall, the seat of the Chandos-Pole family.

A George III gold pair cased pocket watch gave a strong start to the Golding Young & Mawer (20% buyer’s premium) November 4 sale (brought forward a day to avoid lockdown restrictions).

An 1859 first of Darwin’s seminal work shrugs off condition issues to be a best-seller

In family ownership for several generations, this 27oz Charles II sugar box was described by Nottingham auction house Mellors & Kirk (24% buyer’s premium) as “in an exceptional state of preservation, with hardly any sign of wear and no damage or repair worthy of note”.

The invention of the gauger’s slide rule in the 1680s is generally credited to one Thomas Everard of Southampton.

Economic stimulus packages are not a new phenomenon. Georg Siegmund Stobwasser (1717-76) was among the many craftsmen attracted to the Brunswick by the special privileges granted them in the city by Duke Karl I (1713-80) in the wake of the Seven Years’ War.

Focus on how one antiques centre survived and now thrives by being prepared to adapt

Furniture dealership Early Oak has moved from Burford in the Cotswolds to a more central location for all its UK buyers in Harringworth, near Northamptonshire’s border with Rutland.

This sailor’s walking cane below displays many elements of the scrimshander’s art: a whalebone shaft carved with spiral fluting, collars inlaid with shell from the hawksbill turtle and a handle carved as a dove from the tooth of a sperm whale.

The centuries-old Indonesian habit of chewing betel nut, the fruit of the reach palm, was quickly adopted by settlers from the Dutch East India Company who appreciated both its psychoactive properties and its importance as a local social ritual.