Shropshire

Designed for the Suffragette movement by Sylvia Pankhurst, a 19-piece tea service was the star at Halls’ (20%) buyer’s premium) sale in Shrewsbury.

Sphairistike, an ancient Greek term meaning skill in playing at ball, was the name Major Walter Wingfield chose for the game he patented and first advertised early in 1874.

Offered at a recent sale at Mullock’s in Ludlow were three early-19th century games pitched at £150-200 apiece but sold at much higher sums.

This Arts & Crafts-style necklace, alternating moonstone and chalcedony cabochons set in scrolling silver mounts, is the unmistakable work of the London jeweller Sybil Dunlop (1889-1968).

Before he learnt to paint, Sheffield-born artist Joe Scarborough (b.1938) was a laboratory assistant at Batchelors, the processed food company, then a face worker at the Thorpe Hesley colliery.

The biggest literary impression in a recent Shrewsbury sale that combined medals and militaria with well over 200 lots of books and ephemera was made by poets – famous and otherwise.

Shropshire auction house Trevanion & Dean has taken on four new members of staff as joint founder Aaron Dean has chosen to leave and Christina Trevanion has taken on sole ownership of the firm.

Early English oak and yew and ceramics from St Petersburg to Stoke-on-Trent were features of a 250-lot sale which left auctioneer Jeremy Lamond in a quietly upbeat mood after Halls’ (23% buyer’s premium) summer sale at Shrewsbury.

Jerrard Nares of Mytton Antiques deals in 18th and 19th century furniture and related decorative small items from his shop in Shrewsbury.

An antiques dealer in the picturesque market town of Bridgnorth in Shropshire is retiring from the trade to concentrate on her writing career.

A 17th century oak panel marking the rebuilding of one of the best-known dwellings on the Chester Rows sold at auction last week for £4600.

A large canvas by the Taiwan-born British minimalist Richard Lin (1933-2011) sailed to £84,000 at Ludlow saleroom McCartneys (17% buyer’s premium), setting a house record in the process.

Eardley Norton, who is listed at 49 St John’s Street, Clerkenwell between 1762- 94, enjoyed a reputation as a skilled mechanic and the maker of complex timepieces, sometimes with musical and astronomical movements.

Organisers report that all of their events are fully booked as far ahead as October this year

Characteristic etching is best-seller in appealing single-owner mix of works on paper.

Almost wholly reliant on slavery, the tobacco industry was the subtle target of British Abolitionists 50 years before Britain outlawed slavery and nearly a century before the American Civil War.

Catalogued as ‘Art Nouveau… manner of Charlotte Rhead’, this pair of tube-lined tiles went at 10 times the estimate at Trevanion & Dean’s (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale in Whitchurch.