West Midlands

More than two decades since the first sale of golfing memorabilia, this once-booming niche market stands at an important crossroads.

FRIENDS, relatives and colleagues have been shocked by the death of Richard Allen, former Director of Halls fine art auctioneers of Shropshire, in a road accident last Thursday. The tragedy occurred as Mr Allen was returning from a viewing.

Enigmatic, elusive, rarely seen, and classified as mad – but that’s our Dadd!

A substantial portion of the antiques stolen from Ramsbury Manor, near Marlborough in Wiltshire, on February 1, have been recovered near Stratford-upon-Avon.

A funding package worth £7m has been agreed allowing construction to begin on a new Wedgwood Museum in the heart of the Potteries at the company’s Barlaston headquarters.

Staffordshire’s Richard Winterton Auction Group have opened a new saleroom in Lichfield.

The well-known Worcestershire firm Andrew Grant are expected to close their fine art auction department.

Wintertons are moving out of the Lichfield Auction Centre as part of a plan to join their property and livestock divisions under one roof in a new auction centre.

THIEVES escaped with £10,000 worth of furniture and antiques in a raid on a dealer in Staffordshire.

ENTERPRISING Essex organiser Robert Bailey seldom seems to stop moving round the country and this holiday weekend sees him in the heart of the Potteries.

After over 50 years as arms and armour auctioneers in the centre of Birmingham – and an association with the city of close to one and half centuries – Weller & Dufty are to close.

Remarkable things continue to happen in the Beswick market. Consider the fortunes of a handful of scarce, but damaged, models seen recently at the Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent rooms of Louis Taylor (12.5% buyer’s premium).

Brightwells, Leominster, January 12-13 Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent Illuminating this 900-lot Hereford-shire sale was the English brass candlestick featured on the front page of ATG No.1675, February 5, which was taken to £4600 in the confident belief it was a period 16th century example.

THE engaging subject and large size of this 16 x 13in (41 x 33cm) Berlin-style porcelain plaque, right, helped it to the top slot at the January 18 sale held by Philip Laney (15% buyer’s premium) at the Malvern Auction Centre.

A group of 19th century sepia drawings, depicting Aborigines in Queensland, came up for auction at Brightwells (15% buyer’s premium) sale of paintings and prints on January 26 in Leominster, Herefordshire.

LAST year Fran Foster launched her new event, the National Fine Art & Antiques Fair, at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre and, from January 19 to 23, it returns to the Forum, which is arguably the most popular of the NEC’s many halls for antiques fixtures.

Halls (15% buyer’s premium) "It was quite a rare object, in good working order and sang beautifully.”

Richard Winterton (15% buyer’s premium)Trained by Tom Coulthwaite, who schooled a number of high-class jumpers in the first decades of the 20th century, Irish-bred Eremon was one of the top chasers of his era. And 1907 was very much his year.

Pick up a copy of a Beswick price guide from the late 1990s and it will tell you that the Galloway Bull, designed by Arthur Gredington, was made in three versions.

A novelty locomotive sweet container for Chlorodyne Lozenges (probably some form of cough drop) proved a star attraction at Richard Winterton’s December 1 collectors’ auction in Burton on Trent last week.