East Midlands

The London entrepreneur James Cox (c.1723-1800) is best known as a specialist in the intricate clockwork curios encrusted with gold, silver and jewel, referred to as ‘sing-songs.’

“Something awful. Never witnessed anything like it before. After a bombardment of a week the Germans mounted their own trenches and the infantry reckon that every German had a machine gun…”

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

Four years ago we featured the Grade-I Listed Cromford Mill at Matlock in Derbyshire, and most specifically antiques dealer David Walsh who had launched the Cromford Mill Antiques Centre on the site.

The artist Henri Jules Jean Geoffroy (1853-1924), known as ‘Géo’, was a member of the French Naturalist movement and was best known for his paintings of Parisian children and daily urban life.

With tripartite appeal to football fans of England, Wales and – most importantly as it turned out – of Millwall FC, a historic shirt was a winner at Hansons’ ( 20% buyer’s premium) sporting sale.

The Fish Footman puppet is among the most sought after of the entire back catalogue of Pelham Puppets.

A single collection of 490 pieces of Moorcroft dating from the 1890s to modern limited editions offered an overall view of the market when sold at Hansons (20% buyer’s premium).

International Autograph Auctions Ltd has ceased trading and is being placed in voluntary liquidation.

While items of Queen Victoria’s clothing are not a rare sight at auction, a collection on offer in Derbyshire proved of high enough quality to attract bidding from a world-famous collection of royal dress.

On first appearance, Hemswell Antique Centres is your traditional dealer collective, only with more space and dealers than any other centre in Europe.

The Omega Seamaster 300 ranks among the most desirable of all diving watches.

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).

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).

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.

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.