News

One of the quirkier and more unusual offerings to feature in Christie’s £3.7m sale of English furniture and works of art on June 7 was this rare Elizabethan map fragment, one of the first tapestries ever produced in England.

In the 1950s, a farmer in Ingatestone, Essex found a tiny silver tag measuring just 3/4in (1.8cm) long on his farm. Shaped like a shield with a ring, one side was engraved LORD RICH above a stylised bird and the other featured a family crest.

FREQUENTLY, the most interesting object in someone’s garage is not the car.

Auctioneers are not just there for the bad things in life. It was in 2006 that Salisbury firm Woolley & Wallis were contacted by Sheffield silversmith C.J. Vander, a company in administration with stock to liquidate.

FIRST a dealer and now an organiser - Phil Savory, a Northamptonshire-based dealer in ceramics and treen who exhibits at fairs in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex, has decided to start his own fairs venture, PJ Fairs.

France’s share of the global auction market fell by 5.8 per cent in 2006, warns the Conseil des Ventes, the national auction watchdog, in its annual report published on June 25. Worldwide auction activity, it says, rose 34 per cent over the same period.

Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis are to sell the collection of early English, Scottish and Irish silver belonging to the well-known London dealership How.