I’ve not posted recently on curiosities noticed at auction because our local auction house have been relatively well behaved of late. Apart that is from selling a Chinese Vase recently for a world record £43 million – see here, here and here.

However their next sale has thrown up a few further oddities:

A good Japanese porcelain figure of Ho Tei [Laughing Buddha], with hairy belly in richly enamelled robe and holding a fan, 12″ high …

Two skin handbags, a tin of buttons, postcards, unframed pictures, old tin, chandelier, a quantity of lace and linen …

An onyx three piece clock set …

A native blowpipe and three barbed fishing spears with oak shafts.

Victorian Taxidermy: a woodcock in glazed case labelled Robert Blanks, Maldon, and a modern Papilio Ulysses butterfly in case.

A pair of African candlesticks, a model of the Taj Mahal, a small boat, and an egg posy holder.

A pair of filled silver dwarf candlesticks.

It was the last two that really floored me. WTF is an egg posy holder; how do you make eggs into a posy? Who knew silver dwarfs existed, let alone one could fill them (what with?) and make them into candlesticks?