South-west England

Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood of Exeter plans to hold its first-ever 20th century and contemporary art and design sale later this month.

Upholstered Victorian armchairs not being the most in-demand of auction lots at present, the £100-150 estimate of a pair offered at Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium) did not seem overly pessimistic.

Music played its part in the first Dominic Winter sale of the year, with books, scores and other autograph material from another but differently sourced Elgar collection to others offered before by the saleroom.

A bustling scene of Leicester Square by genre painter Edward Prentis (1797-1854) took £6800 at David Lay (18% buyer’s premium) of Penzance.

This painting of a fire in north London drew heated bidding when it went under the hammer at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

Works on paper, not oil paintings, stole the show at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne.

More glamorous sales will take place this year, but a week of four quality auctions at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne provided some solid reassurance about the state of the middle market.

Deemed a little ostentatious in some Western circles, tiaras remain popular with the so-called ‘new’ markets.

The closing nine lots in Lawrences’ January 18 sale were consigned by a lady in Somerset. They had belonged to her mother and grandmother and had been kept in a safe deposit box in the bank for about the last 30 years.

A 17th century long-necked sealed ‘shaft and globe’ wine bottle sold for an unexpected £8300 (plus 15% buyer’s premium) at Barbara Kirk Auctions in Penzance on January 23.

A fragment of the flag believed to have flown from HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar came to national attention this month when it was knocked down for £240,000 at Sotheby’s.

The antiques-rich Devon town of Honiton was famed for its bobbin lacemaking since the 16th century when it was introduced by Flemish refugees.

A reminder of the dramatic drop in demand over recent decades for Victorian landscapes was evident in Gloucestershire where two such oils by Sidney Richard Percy (1822-86) went under the hammer.

Two of the first sales of 2018 suggest that toasts to the future can be drunk from half-full, rather than half-empty, Georgian rummers.

Four unusual collections caught the eye, if not always the cash, at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer's premium).

Bid to a rather higher than suggested £1300 in a Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) sale of December 8 in Crewkerne were two early 19th century works on water meadows.

A classic metaphysical fantasy novel that sold poorly when first issued but later influenced the works of CS Lewis and gained many admirers, A Voyage to Arcturus is the work of David Lindsay.