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Have van, will travel. Competition for market-fresh material is as strong in the northwest as anywhere in the country, so auctioneer Adrian Byrne was more than happy to entertain the prospect of travelling to the Orkney Islands in pursuit of a decent house clearance.

TAJAN (20.93% buyer’s premium) started the year with guns blazing on January 17 and a sale dominated by 19th century weaponry.

Two unfamiliar French artists, Gustave Cariot and André Marchand, figured strongly at Tajan’s Modern art sale on January 31.

FOR a century and a half, the family breweries which peppered Stroud, supplied the Cotswolds with a variety of ales.

WELSH organisers Amulet Fairs are at Deeside on Sunday February 27 and then, on March 6, at Llangollen. Remember to bring your euros.

Buoyed by rising stockmarkets and the continuing strength of the euro against the pound, European private collectors were buying in force at Sotheby’s and Christie’s February round of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art sales in London.

More Nelson fever to report. The exterior to this rounded rectangular George III silver vinaigrette by Birmingham smith Matthew Linwood is really very plain but open it up and it reveals a gilt hinged grille embossed with a ship portrait inscribed Victory and flanked by the word Trafalgar and the date Oct 21 1805.

WITH MacArthurmania gripping a nation already gearing itself up for the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar, this should, in theory, be an auspicious year for the UK marine pictures market.

Though blessed with means of communication beyond the comprehension of anyone of Nelson’s navy – superior by far to signal beacons, semaphore and speeding sloops and cutters – an unfortunate breakdown in these modern methods meant that the two Nelson items featured in last week’s reports were not joined by what proved to be the star turn in a Lyon & Turnbull sale of February 1.

A remarkable array of art and antiques seized by the High Court from an Austrian businessman convicted of fraud were sold by a small-scale Buckinghamshire auctioneer last week.

A New York jury has ruled in a legal case that has locked the horns of the two biggest names in real-time Internet bidding.

ANOTHER feature of this early winter New York season is the sales held by Baldwin’s Auctions, Dmitry Markov and Münzen und Medaillen (New York branch) (all 15% buyer’s premium).

Clarke Gammon Wellers, Guildford, December 14. Buyer’s premium: 15 per centTHE current demand for decorative furniture was underscored at this 710-lot Surrey auction by a pair of hybrid, George III, satinwood marquetry and parcel gilt side tables which stole the limelight.

DISTINGUISHED Kensington early English pottery specialist Jonathan Horne, whose stock is as popular with his many American collectors as on the home market, returns from the New York Ceramics Fair to his shop at 66c Kensington Church Street, London W8 from February 22 to March 5 for his 25th annual exhibition.

The venerable Mayfair dealership The Fine Art Society, whose Bond Street premises are currently undergoing stage two of a refurbishment, has announced two youthful appointments to its board of directors.

Almost a quarter of a century after it was stolen from its walls, the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery is again appealing for the return of a Japanese woodblock print that once belonged to Vincent van Gogh.

JUST a couple of years ago, specialist glass fairs were proliferating. That frenzy seems to have settled down of late, probably because the serious glass dealers understandably are getting choosy. But one that increasingly is making its mark is the Cambridge Glass Fair, organised by Paul Bishop under the name Oxbridge Fairs, which will be held for the fifth time this Sunday (February 20) at Chilford Hall Vineyard, Linton, Cambridgeshire.

Fine Art Auctioneer Dr. Jürgen Fischer in Heilbronn, Germany has announced an important forthcoming sale of European and Studio Glass to be held on 11th and 12th March 2005.

With standard prices of antique furniture failing to keep pace with the property market (reported on the front page of last week’s Antiques Trade Gazette), even the most optimistic market observer could be forgiven for doubting the commercial potential of a mahogany hybrid offered at Bonhams Knightsbridge (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) on January 17.

The Simon Hall collection of cookery books, to which were added lots from other sources, was offered by Dominic Winter on January 27.