Scotland

This Grand Tour-era ring sold at Great Western Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) in Glasgow features an unusual banded carnelian intaglio carved with a putti holding the leg of a large grasshopper.

Two alluring early-20th century British school portraits of attractive young women caught the eye in recent regional sales. Both modestly estimated, they brought similar four-figure sums.

Containing some 600 hand-coloured engraved plates, a set of Sowerby and De Carle’s 'The Mineral Conchology of Great Britain…' of 1812-29 was just another of the many attraction in a sale last month held by Lyon & Turnbull.

A pair of Chinese carved officials’ chairs offered at Ramsay Cornish (20% buyer’s premium) in Edinburgh were typical of the furniture made at the end of the Qing period, some of it for local use, much of it for export.

The Scone Palace Antiques & Fine Art Fair in Perth is usually a draw for Scottish dealers such as Highland Antiques.

Shown below is a plate from A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most Notorious Pyrates… sold at Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium) on February 19

This 14in (25cm) diameter bronze bell shown here bears the insignia of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (the Dutch East India Company or VOC), the date 1747 and the name Jaffanapatnam. It is suspended in a wrought iron frame and mounted to a large stone mill wheel.

The medal awarded to Celtic footballer Steve Chalmers who scored the winning goal as they became the first British club to win the European Cup in 1967 is coming to auction.

'La Navigation du Roy d’Ecosse' by the French cartographer Nicolas de Nicolay (1517-83) is said to be the oldest accurate map of coastal Scotland.

The 19th century Dutch painter Jozef Israëls (1824-1911), a leading member of the Hague School group of landscape painters, was best known for his realistic and sympathetic portrayals of the Dutch peasantry and fisherfolk.

Many familiar names were represented in a concentrated 145-lot specialist sale of British and Continental glass at McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium), but the winner by a distance was Lalique’s Formose green glass vase.

A small fair is being launched in the Fife town of Kirkcaldy on Saturday, February 29.

The arts of the Ottoman court are performing strongly in the marketplace. The unexpected highlight of Lyon & Turnbull’s Five Centuries auction in Edinburgh on February 5 was an Ottoman saddle.

A watercolour study of a dead pheasant attributed to JMW Turner (1775-1851) was taken to £14,000 at a Scottish auction house.

Private domestic demand rather than trade drives bidding at Scottish and Irish art auctions.