Herefordshire

The search for doomed explorer John Franklin grips collectors almost as much as expeditions of discovery themselves.

The start of May is likely to be a busy period with outside fairs and markets opening up around England and Wales after a protracted lockdown hibernation. Here is a snapshot of a few of them.

The work of French designer Fred Brouard (1944-99) is not uncommon at sales in France and the US but seldom appears at auction in the UK.

Firms in tier 1 enjoyed good trading in December but are now back in lockdown.

A new auction firm has launched in the market town of Leominster in Herefordshire.

'Antiques in Tents' is latest event to get thinking creatively to ensure they can go ahead

Stephanie Castell, owner of The Secondhand Warehouse in the Herefordshire town of Leominster, resorted to an extreme measure to make social distancing easier when the centre reopened: she took a wall out.

Self-portraits are among the earliest prints that Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69) made, accounting for a large portion of his etching output when he was in his 20s and living in Leiden.

Detailed down to pneumatic tyres, knock-off hub caps and rack-and-pinion steering, the clockwork toy of Alfa Romeo’s P2, the world-beating racing car between 1924-30, was produced by CIJ (Compagnie Industrielle du Jouet) from 1924-35.

The Victorian Conservative politician Lord Coventry is believed to have commissioned this portrait of favourite hounds Rambler and Marksman.

A demi-parure of mid-18th century Swedish gold jewellery offered by Brightwells (22% buyer’s premium) in Leominster was accompanied by a painted portrait miniature of the original owner wearing the set. The miniature, although uninscribed, was dated 1845.

Topping two days of steady selling and 750 wide-ranging lots at Leominster saleroom Brightwells’ (17.5% buyer’s premium) summer auction was a Republic period cong-form vase in the style of the renowned Qianjiang School artist Wang Yeting.

This small scene by Scottish genre painter Thomas Faed (1826-1900) shown below sold for a quadruple-estimate £8500 at Brightwells (22% buyer’s premium).

Huanghuali furniture in the form of a late Ming/ early Qing ping tou-an (recessed legs table) starred in the Oriental section of Brightwells’ (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale in Leominster.

An estimate of £120-150 was never going to do for a lot in a Leominster sale of March 28 that was catalogued, in full, as “STEIN, Sir Aurel, Serindia, a Detailed Report of Explorations in Central Asia and Westernmost, four vols, and a box with maps (5)”.

Provenance played a key role in the performance of a small group of pictures formerly owned by one of Australia’s biggest artists, Sidney Nolan (1917-92).

An oil on copper painting depicting Saint Joseph by the Bolognese artist Gaetano Gandolfi (1734-1802) was the highlight of Brightwells’ spring fine art sale in Leominster on March 21-22.

Henry Shaw (1812-87) is a well-known name in the world of antique taxidermy.

The sluggish area of Victorian genre painting provided Brightwells (20% buyer’s premium) with one of its top-sellers at the November 8-9 sale in Leominster.