A round-up of results from the country's leading regional salerooms reveals a mixed picture, but at least there are some smiling faces in this part of the world.

The survey, by the Antiques Trade Gazette magazine and website, confirmed Woolley and Wallis's climb towards the top of the regional table, with hammer sales of £11.65m, compared with £6.7m in 2008 and £8.15m in 2007.

An Asian sale that realised £5 million, including the £3.4 million Qianlong jade water buffalo that broke the record for any work of art sold outside London, had everyone in the business looking out for W&W's end-of-year figures.

But it was also a strong year in the Salisbury company's other specialist departments, with chairman Paul Viney telling the Antiques Trade Gazette that five disciplines had turned over £1million-plus for the first time.

On to Dreweatts 1759, and despite the closure of the former Neales of Nottingham a year ago, the company's three South of England salerooms, including Bristol, totalled a premium-inclusive £15.52 million, compared with £16.5 million in 2008.

"Dreweatts' top lot of 2009 was also the most expensive piece of furniture sold outside London, a Chippendale mahogany library chair sold as part of their 250th anniversary sale for £110,000," the Antiques Trade Gazette reports.

"Following the informal alliance struck with Bloomsbury Auctions in September, Dreweatts were also keen to publish a headline figure of £35 million, again including buyer's premium, for sales across the two companies."

It is reported that this year Bonhams – whose regional sales are no longer to be found in Bath or Honiton but only in Knowle, Oxford, Chester, Edinburgh and Bury St Edmunds – declined to give specific details of regional sales in 2009.

But they issued a hammer figure of £45.7 million that included the value of all lots sourced in the UK regions and sold throughout the group. These are the kind of figures that are crucial to the non-sales operations still being carried on in Bath and Exeter.

In 2008, Bonhams sold art and antiques in their regional salerooms for a premium-inclusive £24.7 million.

The credit crisis did not have an adverse effect on trading at Duke's of Dorchester, with turnover broadly in line with 2008 at £4.5 million.

Duke's record year was 2007, when sales of £7.5 million were aided by the £1.7 million made by two rediscovered panels from Fra Angelico's 1438-40 high altarpiece for the Church of San Marco.

General auctions at Duke's Grove salerooms enjoyed their best year in four years, with partner Guy Schwinge putting it down to a resurgence of interest in brown furniture valued at less than £500.

Bet you never expected to see that combination of words together in a single sentence; neither did we.

Duke's main salerooms also have high hopes for 2010, starting on Thursday, when Arts and Crafts furniture from the collection of the late Mary Spencer-Watson of Dunshay Manor, Dorset, will feature.

There is also an important collection of Chinese and other Oriental ceramics on offer, including a Qianlong lantern vase that could already have Duke's dreaming of another bumper year come the end of Thursday.