Gloucestershire

As ever, the most recent sale held by Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) contained a great many maps and atlases and shown below is one of the highlights.

An early 17th century Limoges enamel draw purse attracted a flurry of bids at Chorley’s Attic Sale in Gloucestershire. Set with period portraits of a lady on one side and a gentleman on the other, the accessory has remained intact for about 400 years – in most examples the fabric has deteriorated significantly.

Two ‘Frost Fair’ broadsides printed at one of the many stalls set up on the Thames during a hard 18th century winter in which London’s river froze over were sold in a recent sale held by Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium).

Michael Faraday’s laboratory notebook from 1851 includes a series of diagrams illustrating what he called ‘magnetic lines of force’ – the magnetic field lines that are central to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.

The Chinese carved wooden statue pictured below is one of the offerings at the January Cotswolds Decorative Antiques & Art Fair, where the selection of Asian art is set to be wide and varied.

A spate of early to mid-20th century portraits of society figures and important personalities generated stiff competition at UK sales in London and the regions.

Bid to £32,000 in a Gloucestershire auction was a 1599, first Latin edition of the Dutch traveller and explorer, Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s Navigatio ac itinerarium…

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Differing echoes of the First World War attracted bidders at Dominic Winter’s (20% buyer’s premium) Cirencester auction in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday.

A group of “historically important” watercolour and pencil drawings of the London Blitz sparked a bidding war at Cirencester saleroom Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium).

Robert Hillingford (1826-1904) was a Victorian painter of historical scenes, whose subjects included the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon, as well as scenes taken from Shakespearean plays.

The growing demand in recent years to own pictures by women artists has brought this long-overlooked area of the art market to the fore. In an auction at Cirencester auction house Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) two works by women painters stood out.

Sold for a record $2750 (£2220) at PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) in California on October 10 was an inscribed copy of The World Set Free, a prophetic novel by HG Wells.

A buoyant specialist subject in its own right, studio pottery appeared at a number of the recent Design sales with material by major British names selling in the expected low four-figure range.

First work in photographer’s classic coverage of China and its people makes £48,000.

A sale devoted to Military and Aviation History at Dominic Winter in South Cerney on November 7 includes a rare invitation ticket c.1913 to witness the first man to ‘loop-the-loop’ in a live demonstration at Brooklands Automobile Racing Club.

Tom Mason’s collecting bug began when his father sent him postcards and gifts from places where he was posted during the Second World War. By his early teens he had started his own collection of military memorabilia and began what would become a lifetime obsession with the American Civil War. Pen pals in the US and Canada helped him search for relics.

‘Grolieresque’ cover on 1527 edition of key Italian Renaissance work boosts auction value.