South-east England

Edenbridge Galleries is closing after 13 years with owners Lennox and Susan Cato saying they want to concentrate on their own business.

The English artist, illustrator and author Christopher ‘Kit’ Williams (b.1946) is best known for the book 'Masquerade', the pictorial storybook which contained clues to the location of an 18ct gold jewelled hare buried somewhere in the British countryside. It created quite a sensation in 1979.

A total of eight Victorian stone animal troughs have been stolen in recent months, with the latest two disappearing from Tunbridge Wells in Kent.

This ‘Black Forest’ type clock on the theme of hunting is signed by Swiss master carver Johann Huggler of Brienz (1834-1912).

A pair of Russian Empire chairs, 1810-15, featuring striking decorative brass inlay is offered for £25,000 by Ellis Fine Art at the Petersfield Antiques Fair.

It’s a hectic time for Bournemouth-based fair organisers Chris Brown and Geoff Fagan of Grandma’s Attic Fairs as they reorganise their fairs portfolio following their acquisition of the family-run Emmott Promotions.

This pair of 19th century electroplated cups, offered by Andrew Smith & Son (21% buyer’s premium) in Alresford on December 11, is stamped for the noted Sydney silversmith Evan Jones (1846-1917).

An atypical visitor to a recent sale at Canterbury Auction Galleries (24% buyer’s premium) was a Norwegian silver gilt brudekrone dating from the late 18th or early 19th century.

Alongside pieces made in Kinsale, Galway and Waterford, silver from the small County Cork town of Youghal is among the scarcest of all Irish provincial silver. Only a handful of pieces survive that carry the punning town mark of a yawl.

Victorian silver novelties do not come much better than this claret jug, formed as a 9in (23cm) tall kneeling elephant by James Barclay Hennell, London 1881. The hinged head (currently lacking tusks) forms the cover.

Scientific instruments and photographica specialist Flints Auctions has opened new premises and is launching a fresh type of sale.

Two Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947) gouache watercolours painted during her artistic prime were taken to multi-estimate sums at separate UK salerooms in the same week.

Putting classic English furniture firmly back in the forefront of provincial sales in the first part of December was this Chippendale-design Gainsborough library armchair offered in Winchester by Andrew Smith (21% buyer’s premium).

B2B Events’ two-day antiques and vintage fairs at the Kent County Showground are a very accessible trade stop.

Paintings by Leeds-born artist Louis H Grimshaw (1870-1943) are often overshadowed by his better-known father, John Atkinson Grimshaw (1863-93).

“I will always be a painter of beaches,” declared Eugène Boudin (1824-98) in 1864.

Tucked inside an18th century treen model of a ship’s hull is a historic note reading This was taken out of a writing bureau belonging to Lord Collingwood. I saw the bureau and know its history.