Auctioneers

Among the most eagerly contested lots at Bonhams’ latest sale of Fine Decorative Arts held in Bond Street was this set of four English heraldic beasts c.1600.

A “seminal document of Parliamentary history” has been purchased at auction by dealership Philip Mould & Company for a hammer price of £62,000.

A ‘real tennis’ racquet dating from the reign of King Louis XV of France, used by the first of the great players whose achievements are on record, is being served up at auction.

After moving to a farm at Cropton, North Yorkshire, over the next 25 years Ian David Smith assembled an extensive private collection of horse-drawn vehicles and associated items.

Beatrix Potter was a pioneer of character merchandising. Two years after the publication of the first of her ‘little books’ she designed, fabricated and patented her own Peter Rabbit stuffed toy in 1903 – making him the first ever licensed character.*

A letter by Carl Linnaeus (1707-78), father of modern botany and taxonomy, has set an auction record in his native Sweden.

Dedicated anniversary sale devoted to Robert Thompson centres on three private collections

Not a first edition of the horror classic but the version printed five years later is also sought after

An Elizabethan or early Stuart diamond cluster gold ring found in Wormington, Gloucestershire, in November 2024 was among 14 metal detected jewels offered at Noonans (24% buyer’s premium) in Mayfair.

Clockmaker Brockbank & Atkins of St John’s Square, Clerkenwell, was known as a supplier of mahogany and silvered brass eight-day wall clocks for lighthouses.

A collector’s cabinet sold by Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury on June 30-July 1 was from a small group of furnishings fashioned from the Waterloo Elm.

Original copper printing plates for works by famous artists do not appear often at auction, and rarely does a private collection come for sale.

Paintings of elegantly attired female figures hold a special place in the oeuvre of the Scottish Colourist Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell (1883-1937).

When a Philadelphia family consigned Europa, a 1927 painting by Czech Modernist Josef Šíma (1891-1971), to Freeman’s (28/21% buyer’s premium) last year, it prompted scholars and art historians to do a double take.

Thomas Annan’s famous book is now rated as ‘one of the finest photographic works of the 19th century’