Cup

Size and value often have an inverse relationship in the antiques world where small can be beautiful.

Quite possibly the largest sale of Derbyshire blue john ever held is going under the hammer at Fellows of Birmingham.

Estimated to sell for $800-1200, this loving cup combining the talents of William Moorcroft and the San Francisco jewellers Shreve & Co. sold for $27,000 (£17,650) at Clars Auction Gallery in Oakland, California.

THANKS to a clever bit of detective work by one of its curators, the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle has been able to reunite a porcelain cup and saucer that have separated for over 200 years.

The appearance on the market of a piece of ‘A’ mark porcelain at Woolley and Wallis’s Salisbury rooms on June 4 will be an exciting occasion for English porcelain buffs, especially those of an academic persuasion.

THE very earliest English porcelain has long held sway in the market, but one feature of Part I of the mammoth Zorensky Worcester collection sold by Bonhams in March was the high prices paid for some of the late 1760s and early 1770s underglaze blue ground tablewares.

ALTHOUGH Oriental pieces were the main strength of Woolley & Wallis’s (15% buyer's premium) quarterly specialist ceramics sale on February 25, there was also evidence of the continued strength of the market for unusual examples of early English porcelain.

FRANCE: A gilded and bleu céleste Louis XVI Sèvres cup and saucer, right, 51/2in (14cm) tall and known as the Gobelet Dauphin, sold over estimate for Fr260,000 (£24,800) at Piasa in Paris on December 7.

UK: WHAT was it about this Bloor Derby cup which attracted attention from as far afield as America and Japan, when it was offered at the Derby salerooms of Neales on December 8?