South-west England

Studio pottery has been hogging the arts and crafts headlines for a while now. In recent years collectors have really taken this field to heart and items produced by 20th century designers such as Lucie Rie and Hans Coper have been drawing strong bids at auction.

At the time, Gary Lineker’s promise to present the new season’s first Match of the Day in his underpants if Leicester City won the Premier League didn’t seem like a rash pledge to make.

The original artwork for the cover of The Mighty Thor, published by Marvel Comics in 1968, sold for £36,000 at a recent auction at Charterhouse in Sherborne, Dorset.

An eleventh-hour private treaty deal has secured a photographic archive for the Penlee House Museum and Gallery.

Five pieces of furniture consigned from direct descendants of architect and craftsman Sidney Barnsley (1865-1926) drew bidders’ attention at Woolley & Wallis’ latest Arts and Crafts sale in Salisbury.

Why pay £6000-12,000 for a roadworthy Austin 7 when for thousands of pounds more you can have one that’s a wreck?

A vast collection of nearly 3500 diecast models fetched £120,000 at west country auctioneers Piers Motley. The lifetime collection of John Kinchen had been “well known in the Dinky world for decades”.

The small loan exhibition ‘The Peculiarity of Algernon Newton (1880-1968)’ by dealer Daniel Katz in 2012 helped put on the map a British painter who went largely unrecognised during his lifetime.

The only remaining 1928 Morris model G taxi will come up for auction at Richard Edmonds Auctions in Chippenham this month.

A rare Rolex Submariner took a record £160,000 plus buyer’s premium at a Gardiner Houlgate sale in Wiltshire on May 25.

A dozen protesters dressed as elephants gathered outside Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury last week to demonstrate against the sale of ivory at the firm’s Asian art sale.

Salisbury-based auctioneers Woolley & Wallis have launched a new department and welcome Ned Cowell as their head of Arms & Armour, Medals & Coins and Militaria

Made under the watchful eye of the third Qing emperor, a Chinese porcelain vase valued at just £12 in the 1950s sold for £750,000 at the latest sale held by Mallams in Cheltenham.

A rotting old caravan propped up on a farm might not sound like the kind of place you’d expect to discover a valuable family heirloom. But for a Devon-based furniture restorer, it proved just that when they found an Art Deco brooch believed to be a rare piece hiding within the contents of the van.

Certain moments in films stay razor sharp in the mind long after you have seen them. Mention ‘Jack Nicholson’ and it is odds-on a mental image will spring up of that terrifying ‘Here’s Johnny’ scene from The Shining.

Made under the watchful eye of the third Qing emperor, a porcelain vase valued at just £12-15 in the 1950s is expected to bring over £20,000 when it is sold at auction on April 27-28.

John Wood the Elder’s (1704-54) set of drawing instruments were offered at Clevedon Auction Rooms earlier this month and were bought by the Bath Preservation Trust for £21,000.

London-based Criterion Auctioneers are to launch quarterly auctions in Wiltshire, targeting high-value consignments from around the UK.

Cased fish, once the only acceptable face of the taxidermy market, have cooled since the 1990s when prices in excess of £3000 were commonplace.

Tributes are being paid to Richard Cole, a Gloucestershire specialist in Asian works of art, whose body was discovered in the Herengracht canal in Amsterdam on February 1.