East of England

The Polar Museum in Cambridge has confirmed that it has secured the photographic archive linked to Scott’s last expedition after a public appeal for funds by explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

DEALER PROFILE – Carolyn Mackender started her professional life at Bonhams, changed direction to become a teacher and has now come full circle, working as a dealer in decorative, vintage and retro pieces.

A Suffolk saleroom set to hold their first auction in May are going for a new business model of flat vendors’ fees based on reserves rather than the hammer price.

People who change their lives by entering the trade often share something in common – they show what can be done with a passion for antiques plus drive, determination and chutzpah.

This pencil drawing by John Constable inscribed ‘Binfiled Decr. 6th 1816’ is believed to have made when the artist was staying in Binfield in Berkshire whilst returning from his honeymoon in Dorset with his wife Maria.

A single-owner collection of Modern British art will be offered at Boningtons’ sale of fine art, antiques and Asian works of art in Loughton, Essex on February 26.

A rare visitor to the recent numismatic sale at Lockdales in Martlesham Heath, Ipswich was a group of three convict tokens.

Cambridge auctioneers Cheffins have sold the residual contents of the Luton Hoo estate.

More than 80 lots of Danish rosewood furniture were withdrawn from Sworder’s January 28 sale of Decorative Art and Design after advice that their sale contravened the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna.

This Art Deco walnut sideboard accompanied by a dining table is one of around 400 lots of Art Deco, Arts & Crafts and Danish design furniture on sale at Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchet later this month.

This week’s 10 Questions is with Natalie Smith, owner of Woodbridge Antiques Centre, Suffolk

English porcelain birth tablets are unique to Lowestoft – and one of many pieces that give the factory’s wares such a profound sense of time and place.

This cased Austro-Hungarian gold and enamel brooch/pendant with a diamond-set monogram and coronet was the gift of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to Mary Marshall, the head housekeeper at Welbeck Abbey, country residence of the Dukes of Portland, from the 1890s until her retirement in 1923.

Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchet in Essex had to postpone last week’s Interiors sale after the St Jude’s storm knocked out their electricity supply for two days.

Sworders have sold the contents of Debden Manor, Essex from their saleroom in Stansted Mountfitchet – a house sale titled ‘An Architect’s Eye, A Collector’s Passion’.

An extraordinary relic of the African slave trade was among the headline lots from a three-day sale held by Lockdales in Martlesham Heath near Ipswich last month.

Woburn Antiques Centre, at the heart of the Woburn Abbey Estate in Bedfordshire, is to close on September 1.

A Suffolk-based jewellery dealer with over 30 years experience in the trade faces ruin after falling victim to a sophisticated robbery last month.

Hundreds of gelatin silver studio prints by the society and theatre photographer Angus McBean (1904-90) will be sold by Lacy Scott & Knight of Bury St Edmunds in a stand-alone sale on April 12.

It was at Frinton-on-Sea Golf Club that James Grinter, managing director at Reeman Dansie of Colchester, first learned of the Douglas Shepherd collection of Arts and Crafts silver.