Exeter

Alongside living with bushmen in Africa, visiting 33 native tribes in Brazil and riding the length of the Great Wall of China, the Cornish-based explorer Robin Hanbury-Tenison (b.1936) also found time to pursue another passion – one much closer to home.

At a time when catering for niche interests is a profitable path for auctioneers, recent sales in Scotland, Ireland and England have shown that the furniture market can still come to life – provided it meets three criteria.

A collection of fashion books and plates offered as part of an Exeter sale on September 12 was led at £1050 by an 1831, second edition of John Jackson’s The Improved Tailor’s Aera.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Complete with 48 cards and rules sheet, and still in its original, if slightly fragile case with printed label, Panko, or Votes for Women… is a sort of ‘Rummy’- inspired card game pitching Suffragists against Anti-Suffragists.

It’s a rare sale these days at which an English furniture standard challenges quality Chinese pieces for price, but the top end of the trade certainly rated a 6ft 3in (1.9m) William and Mary walnut and featherbanded bureau cabinet offered by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

A very suitable buyer emerged for an 19th century picture of The Artists Rifles by John Evan Hodgson (1831-95) offered in Exeter.

One of just 100 copies of a scarce, privately published edition of poems called Salvo for Russia, produced in 1942 in aid of the ‘Comforts Fund for Women and Children of Russia’, was offered in a recent West Country sale.

At some point in its life, an early photographically illustrated work on the art of wood turning offered in a recent Exeter sale had been converted for use as a postcard album, but it still sold for a four-times estimate £4300.

A sensational result emerged for the artist-potter Hans Coper (1920-81) at the 20th Century & Contemporary sale at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood in Exeter.

Outselling much of the sort of furniture its owner could have worked on, an 18th century carpenter’s oak tool chest on stand was among the pleasant surprises for vendors at the opening sale of the year at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

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

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).

The late Gerald and Brenda Flowerday caught the collecting bug in the late 1960s, igniting a keen interest in 18th century English ceramics that would last for the next 40 years.

Autumn has been the setting for so many specialist sales round the regions that an all-disciplines, quality sale such as that held by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium) at Exeter on October 3 was almost a rarity.

This evening village scene by the landscape painter James Hamilton Hay (1874- 1916) drew multiple bids at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium) in Exeter on October 3.

Dominated by two lots of Chinese porcelain, the September 28-30 sale at Hansons (17.5% buyer’s premium) also included eight Royal Worcester pieces by George Owen (1845-1917) who was inspired by the Orient to produce his trademark reticulated wares.

A single-owner collection relating to the English Civil War featured among the 740 lots that made up a September 6 sale held by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

A large oil painting offered at auction for first time depicts notorious figure from Charles II’s court and sells for five times top estimate.

The big surprise at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood'’s April 11-12 sale at Exeter was this 17th-18th century Tyrolean wood and gilt crucifix.