Pick of the Week

The collecting history of English silver spoons spans well over a century.

Found in a wardrobe during the clearance of a deceased estate in Spalding, ‘a group of four early 19th century French heraldic plaques’ sold way over hopes at Stamford Auction Rooms in Lincolnshire on February 26.

Sometimes it pays to look a little further afield.

This silver-gilt chinoiserie garniture would not have looked out of place at the Brighton Pavilion.

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

With the advent of modern tournament chess in the Victorian era came the issue of game time.

A set of six 17th century portraits depicting Ottoman sultans sparked an extraordinary bidding contest at a Sotheby’s online sale.

Rare Japanese Meiji gold coin emerges at auction in West Sussex

In the early 1880s Alfred Barnard, secretary of Harper’s Weekly Gazette (the magazine that morphed into today’s Harpers Wine & Spirit), decided to visit all distilleries in Scotland, England and Ireland.

Relatively few English mapmakers came to the fore in the 17th century at a time when Dutch cartographers were well ahead of the competition.

Catalogued as ‘fine and exceptionally rare’, a north German parade cuirass is on its way to the Art Institute of Chicago after being sold at auction.

François Nicole (b.1766), the Geneva-based pioneer of the key-wind musical box, is thought to have made around 440 boxes during his working life, but only around 60 are known today.

One of around 30 known medieval English folding almanacs, and one of only a few in private hands, sold for £95,000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium) at Tennants.

Estimated at £40,000-60,000, a lacquer cabinet from Edo period Japan sold for £105,000 at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury on November 23.

A copy of the first folio atlas ever printed in the Islamic world has sold for £69,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) – the highlight of the first day of Dreweatts’ sale titled Weston Hall and the Sitwells: A Family Legacy.

“From then on, nothing went right. My carpet designs were rejected and my textiles were not required."

Connecting two of Britain’s leading 20th century female artists, a pencil drawing by Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-75) given to Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004) as a wedding present was the highlight of Lyon & Turnbull’s recent auction of works from the latter’s collection.

Maltese silver pieces auctioned in the UK return to the Mediterranean island.

Emile Berliner (1851-1921), a German clerk in a Washington DC haberdashery, is credited with inventing both the first commercially successful disc record and the first machine to play it.

A pair of Sphinx garden ornaments estimated at just £300-500 at a Suffolk auction were hammered down at £195,000.