News topics

Is this the finest clock to be sold in England this year? The Isle of Wight auctioneers who will offer it for sale next month believe it is. It will be offered for sale by Island Auction Rooms (formerly Shanklin Auction Rooms) at their annual antiques sale timed to coincide with the influx of boating enthusiasts for Cowes Week on August 7.

EBAY have vowed to fight a new French court ruling that effectively makes them responsible for what is sold on their site. In effect, the ruling could mean them having to vet items before they are offered, rather than removing offending objects once they have been alerted to them.

A DEALER had £50,000 of jewellery stolen when his car was broken into after he returned from a fair in Birmingham. Thieves used the same modus operandi employed in previous thefts at Coinex and in Hatton Garden.

If Bonhams' July 2 sale of 20th century British art is anything to go by, demand for the humorous art of Beryl Cook (1926-2008) has strengthened since she died in May.

AUCTIONEERS at the latest Society of Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers (SOFAA) seminar were visibly shocked as they learnt how easy it is to become an unwitting party to a bribe.

Swiss auctioneers Koller, who are celebrating 50 years of auctioneering with Jubiliee sales this September, are holding a two-day exhibition of highlights this week on July 9 and 10.

EBAY’S latest bid to tackle fraud – by insisting UK sellers accept payment via PayPal – has come under attack. Due to come into force on July 9, the online giant says it will help block fraudulent transactions and data theft.

London’s flagship June Impressionist and Modern sales saw Christie’s and Sotheby’s notch up a premium-inclusive total of £298m between them in three days.

The only known copy of the world’s first telephone directory sold for $140,000 (£71,430) at Christie’s New York on June 17 as part of an $11m (£5.9m) sale of the Richard Green scientific library.

THIS pottery figure of a cat is among the rarest of the Cubist-style felines designed by Louis Wain for the Austrian manufacturer Amphora.

Is this the best ever dug bottle? That is the question asked by advertising and bottle specialists BBR who will offer it for sale at The Elsecar Heritage Centre, Barnsley, on July 6.

A Kent dealer has received a two-year suspended sentence following a three-year international operation into ivory and whale-tooth smuggling. The case is the latest under Operation Charm, an ongoing campaign against the illegal trade in endangered species in London.

Sotheby’s have announced the highlight of their autumn series: an auction of new works consigned by Damien Hirst on September 15-16.

AN historic and important medieval scientific instrument, known as the Canterbury Quadrant, has been saved for the nation. St James’s specialist dealers Trevor Philip and Sons have sold the quadrant to the British Museum for £411,250.

Christie’s King Street devoted an entire day to traditional English furnishings when a 369-lot all-day sale of the collection of the late Simon Sainsbury was followed by a highly select, mixed-owner, 12-lot evening auction of what they termed “exceptional furniture”.

The latest addition to the London street art calendar took place at Village Underground in Shoreditch on June 17, where Dreweatts became the first auctioneer from outside London to host a dedicated Urban Art Sale.

THE man regarded as the world’s leading authority on Rembrandt has declared the self portrait that sold at auction in the Cotswolds for £2.2m last October as a genuine work by the Dutch master.

Christie’s English furniture day on June 18 was marked by the £9m auction of a dozen pieces of top-flight examples and by the 369-lot £13.6m sale of the collection of the late Simon Sainsbury.

A COLLECTION of furniture and objects from a grand Parisian townhouse will go under the hammer in France at the end of the month – courtesy of the Ivory Coast Government.

An entire day was devoted to glass by Bonhams earlier this month as they offered just shy of 500 lots of English and Continental glass in their Bond Street rooms.