Essex

Could these be the opera glasses used by Mary Lincoln on the night her husband was assassinated? Colchester auction house Reeman Dansie will offer them for sale on September 24-25 with a guide price of £10,000-20,000.

Purchased for £1 from a Hertfordshire charity shop earlier this year, a Qianlong famille rose wall vase will carry an estimate of over £50,000 at Sworders in the autumn.

An archive relating to a once famous Suffolk dynasty comes for sale at Sworders in Stansted Mountfitchet on September 10-11. The diaries, journals and letters of Lady Ann Cullum (1807-75) of Hardwick House near Bury St Edmunds form part of a Fine Interiors sale.

Brought into the Epping saleroom of the Bonington auction house with a collection of Moorcroft, this Florentine Mannerist bronze sold for £150,000.

Private buying dominated as Essex saleroom Sworders (23% buyer’s premium) offered the selected contents of a Cotswold manor house.

The Flemish post-Impressionist Emile Claus (1849-1924) embraced the prevailing taste for plein-air painting when he moved to the village of Astene by the river Lys in 1883.

Pieces from the late 19th century, a vibrant but occasionally derided moment in the history of the decorative arts, provided many of the highlights to Sworders’ summer Fine Interiors sale in Stansted Montfitchet.

Unusually for an Asian art sale, the top price at Sworders' latest offering in in Stansted Mountfitchet was paid for a Japanese work of art.

This Chinese export charger, measuring 15in (40cm), is one of two from the service made for Captain Matthew Martin, captain of the 32-gun East Indiaman Marlborough.

Some early Chinese objects are included in the Timeline Auctions sale in Harwich, Essex on May 28.

A collaborative portrait between two revered 19th century equestrian painters will lead a sale of sporting art at Essex saleroom Sworders on April 30.

London Judaica dealer Joseph Landau travelled to Sworders in Stansted Moutfitchet on March 13 with the sole purpose of buying a pencil, charcoal and white chalk drawing Carrying the Torah by Simeon Solomon (1840-1905).

Women artists – historically overlooked in scholarship and undervalued on the market – have emerged more and more at auction over the last few years.

Among the lots drawing keen interest at Sworders’ Modern British and 20th century sale in Essex on February 26 was a privately consigned 2ft x 2ft 8in (61 x 83cm) oil on canvas of Burmese women collecting water by Royal portraitist Gerald Kelly (1879-1972).

It’s not every day you see an auctioneer holding a 5ft 6in (1.67m) long sperm whale penis. Then again, it’s not every day that you see the sort of lots that are offered in Sworders’ Out of the Ordinary auction.

Sworders offers late 19th and 20th century styles reflecting the period zeitgeist.

The names of two 17th century makers took these two lantern clocks way above estimates at Sworders’ (23% buyer’s premium) sale at Stansted Mountitchet. Both were from the Barbara Holliday collection that majored on Modern British art (see Art Market, ATG No 2377).

Modern British pictures by female artists made a major contribution to the bottom line at Sworders’ (23% buyer’s premium) dispersal of the Barbara Holliday Collection.