Winston Churchill photograph is leader in sale

A signed photograph of Winston Churchill, the wartime prime minister, was the highlight of a recent sale at Somerset auctioneers, Lawrences.

The photography included an attached plaque that read: ‘Winston Churchill, June 12th 1944, Normandy and back’. The photograph was acquired by Alfred F Noyes, who had served as a navigator on the the destroyer HMS Kelvin when it ferried Churchill and others over to Normandy in 1944.

The photograph carried a pre-sale estimate of £600-800, but keen bidding lifted the hammer price to an impressive £10,625 .

In the collectors and decorative arts section of the Collectors’ Items, Decorative Arts, Ceramics and Oriental Works of Art sale, a private collection of Victorian Tunbridgeware made £6,950; an elaborate cased Meissen clock with various birds including a parrot and cockatoo and birds on a rococo-style base made £2,125; and an unusually large model of a Cockatoo (47cm high) by Paul Walther for Meissen led the field and flew to £4,750.

Within the ceramics section, a 19th-century Chinese enamel incense burner or possibly a spittoon made £2,500;  a set of nine coloured woodblock prints from the Shin Hanga movement, circa 1950s, with depictions of Kabuki actors, acquired by the vendor’s relatives in the late 1950’s, were bid to £2,250; and a Chinese bronze gold splash vase made £5,250.