The breakfast table, designed by Philip Webb for Morris and Company – the Arts & Crafts manufacturer and retailer founded by William Morris -  was hotly contested by collectors and traders at auctioneers Moore Allen & Innocent in Cirencester and by bidders on the phone lines.

 

The oval-topped oak table, designed in 1865, sold for more than £7,000 - outselling the second-highest lot price of the day by a country mile. 

 

Webb worked hand-in-hand with William Morris – one of the Cotswolds' most famous sons - throughout his career. A founder of Morris & Company, Webb also founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings with Morris. 

 

With sale price of £7,200, the table achieved almost ten times the value of the second-highest lot price, a bag containing mainly fiddle pattern silver forks of varying dates and makers, which made £750 – reflecting the high value of scrap silver and gold.

 

In fact it was one of three lots in the top ten whose hammer price was based on its scrap value. A mid-20th century tankard inscribed '1961 Winner of the Subscribers Race, Old Berks Point to Point', together with two other tankards of a similar age, made £380 while a box of assorted costume jewellery comprising three Victorian pendants set with semi-precious stones, two nine-carat gold crucifixes, a silver chain and a gold plated Albert chain achieved £340.

 

Scrap values may be underpinning the prices achieved by antique silver and gold, but some people still buy antiques to own a useful, well-made and beautiful piece of furniture. This was certainly true of the private bidders who bought a pair of walnut and oak bookcases in the Regency style for £480, an oak twin-lidded box in the early 19th century Provincial manner for £420 and an early 20th century French limed oak dwarf linen press with two doors and four drawers for £400.

 

Elsewhere in the auction, interior design pieces achieved good prices, including a pair of 20th century Chinese cloisonné baluster shaped vases decorated with chrysanthemum on a blue ground, which sold for £520, a large gilt metal 25-branch chandelier with scrolling acanthus decoration, which achieved £450 and a large gilt metal 18 branch chandelier with cut glass pendants and prism shaped drops, which made £360.

 

Meanwhile, the first hint of a sunny Easter sent bidders outdoors to snap up a pair of reconstituted stone garden urns in the 18th Century taste, which made £300, a modern General Trading Company teak garden dining table, which sold for £230, a reconstituted stone bird bath on square pedestal, which sold for £140, and various items of garden furniture and tools, including lawnmowers and a barbecue. 

 

Those were far from the most unusual lots of the day, however. An Edwardian oak dining table which converted into a quarter-sized snooker table, complete with cues and scoreboard, made £300, a dressmaker's dummy inscribed 'R.D.Franks Ltd, Market Place, Oxford Circus, London W1' sold for £100 and a railway signal box sign bearing the name Crews End achieved £240 while its neighbour, from Holloway North Up, sold for £180.