Edinburgh

This previously unrecorded and beautifully painted dish, dated 1537, by the maiolica artist Francesco Xanto Avelli (c.1486-1542) sold for £325,000 at Lyon & Turnbull's latest in Edinburgh.

WHILE most reports in the media focused on the record price paid for a pair of Queen Victoria's undergarments, Lyon & Turnbull's sale of works from the Forbes Collection raised the more serious question of the current state of the Victorian art market.

IN what promises to be the biggest test of the overall health of the Victorian picture market for some years, Lyon & Turnbull will sell the entire contents of Old Battersea House, the London home of the Forbes family, in Edinburgh on November 1.

BONHAMS Scotland is to establish two new departments at its Edinburgh headquarters in Queen Street.

THE Edinburgh sales at Bonhams and Lyon & Turnbull in August both featured Wemyss wares, offering an opportunity to assess the current market.

The latest sale of Scottish silver at Lyon & Turnbull included a number of early Edinburgh hollowares, including this pair of James VI (I of England) communion cups.

ANOTHER major price for L.S. Lowry (1887-1976) came courtesy of Lyon & Turnbull's latest evening sale in Edinburgh, as The Hawker's Cart sold at £550,000 to a private buyer south of the border.

SPORT is never far from controversy these days. So it was no surprise when the news that George Best’s and Nobby Stiles’s most valued medals and trophies were to be sold that there was an outcry in certain sections of the media.

THE famous Amen series of diamond point engraved Jacobite goblets, made c.1745-50, have long been emblems of Scottish nationalism. Yet it is widely assumed that the engraver of many of them was English.

PURITAN spoons are not uncommon survivors in English silver but, for reasons still largely unknown, Scottish examples are very rare. To date, only nine hallmarked or provincial examples are known.

THE Lyon & Turnbull sale at Edinburgh got off to a splendid start when Lot 1, a Worcester porcelain plate from the Duke of Gloucester service, c.1770, sold at £12,000.

A PENCIL and watercolour sketch showing men at work on a celebrated escape tunnel was a major attraction in a log or record compiled in 1943-45 by a Scottish P.O.W. sold by Lyon & Turnbull of Edinburgh for £3200 on January 13.

WHEN St John Price bought his first sycamore and penwork box from Halcyon Days in Brook Street, London for £30 in 1966, the term Mauchline ware was yet to be invented.

Edinburgh-based dealers Georgian Antiques have pulled off one of their more remarkable sales – 7000 hickory-shafted golf clubs to a Chinese businessman who found them when surfing the internet.

THIS iron casket with gold and silver damascening decoration provided the high point of the sale conducted by Shapes of Edinburgh on March 7, selling at £37,000.

A Borders property provided Thomson Roddick (15% buyer's premium) with a sensational discovery for their sale in Rosewell, Edinburgh on December 4.

SO-CALLED castle-top boxes represent a fascinating moment in British social history. Fashioned by the silver ‘toy’ makers of Birmingham, these vinaigrettes and card cases engraved or die-stamped with British landmarks were seemingly marketed as tourist souvenirs.

Recently sold at auction, three examples of the well-known Nelson memorial vinaigrette made by Matthew Linwood of Birmingham in 1805 sold for markedly different prices – and for good reason.

Fireworks were seen in Edinburgh on November 5 when this Charles Voysey secretaire leapt above its modest £3000-5000 estimate to sell for £70,000 at Lyon & Turnbull's Decorative Arts sale.

DESPITE falling stocks, banks freezing and now top-end contemporary art taking a tumble, Samuel John Peploe's (1871-1935) Roses sold at £440,000 hammer to a UK private buyer at Christie's Scottish art sale in Edinburgh. With premium included, this was a record for a Scottish Colourist, although not a hammer record.