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DELVAUX and Redon were among eight artists granted solo exhibitions at Jacob’s Bateau Lavoir gallery in Rue de Seine between 1960 and 1986, along with James Ensor, Charles Filiger, Bernadette Kelly, Pierre Klossowski, Marie Laurencin, and Paul Wunderlich – all represented at Bailly-Pommery-Voutier & Sotheby's (23.92 - 14.35% buyer's premium), notably Filiger with 13 lots, and Ensor with eight.

THE portrait of John Davis seen right – if it is indeed the man after whom the straits between Greenland and Baffin Island are named – was far and away the earliest of the Arctic lots on offer, but not the most expensive.

BUSINESS could not be better for Simon Spero, the Kensington Church Street, London W8 18th century porcelain specialist who opened his annual exhibition on Tuesday last week (October 5) at noon.

DAY two of the sale of the Mira Jacob Collection, held by Bailly-Pommery-Voutier & Sotheby’s (23.92 - 14.35% buyer's premium), was devoted to prints and illustrated books and yielded €780,000 (£530,000) with all but seven of the 166 lots selling.

JUST before the onslaught of numismatic sales in London, there have been a number of interesting dispersals abroad.

THREE leading international dealers in antique needlework are getting together in New York later this month for a special selling exhibition – The Admirable Art of the Needle: Samplers & Embroideries 1650-1850.

AN October 21 sale of historical documents and letters to be held in Ludlow by Mullock Madeley includes a vellum document of 1227, witnessed by Hugh de Burgh, in which Henry III grants the right in perpetuity to hold an annual fair to the Prior and Canons of St Mary Magdelene of Combwell (on the Kent/Sussex borders).

THERE was another vast sale (2180 lots) in Osnabruck held by F.R. Kuenker (15% buyer’s premium) on September 27-28. It was the classical collection of Professor Dr Hagen Tronnier that had clearly been formed over a very long time and there were many pieces which had not been available for general study for ages. This factor resulted in some higher than expected prices.

SOME of the 16 shows which comprise the traditional autumn season of selling exhibitions held by the Cotswold Antiques Dealers’ Association have already been covered in this column but here are a few more to whet the appetite.

POLICE have alerted dealers across Ireland to a cache of antiques stolen in a weekend raid at the home of Lord Henry Mountcharles on his Slane Castle estate in County Meath.

RIGHT: London auctioneers Spink’s pre-sale billing of this Anglo Saxon gold penny as ”the most important discovery in British numismatics for many years” gained tangible endorsement last week when they sold it for £200,000 – a new record for an English coin.

THE National Maritime Museum has purchased two prints from a London dealer following its appeal in the Antiques Trade Gazette for information about two missing William Hodges paintings.

THIS unusual metamorphic George III mahogany dressing table, right, goes under the Charterhouse gavel on Friday October 15.

THE focus of the furniture trade’s attention in Bamfords' (15% buyer's premium) 1025-lot Derbyshire outing on September 8 was a c.1835 mahogany, triple-pedestal dining table with a top formed from two D-sections and a central Pembroke drop leaf.

FURNITURE in Bonhams' (17.5/10% buyer's premium) Par sale on September 2 was given a considerable boost by a contingent of Irish dealers who between them secured around 20 of the more standard entries in the 104-lot section.

DISPERSING 200 mixed-quality clocks may seem a daunting prospect for some provincial auctioneers, but, by selling the Staffordshire collection in bite-size chunks through their general, oak and country and fine auctions, Richard Winterton (15% buyer's premium) managed to get away almost all entries during the summer months.

SOME provincial auctioneers batten down the hatches during August, but for Keys (10% buyer's premium) in Norfolk it was a particularly busy month with two antique sales, a collectors’ auction and a picture outing.

PROVINICIAL auctioneers may no longer be able to bank on a solid furniture take-up to keep business ticking over (the 162-lot furniture section at Bruton Knowles (15% buyer's premium) on September 16 fielded the lion’s share of casualties), but at least they can rely on unusual, commercial or quality entries still selling at a premium.

AS is often the case at regular provincial auctions these days, proceedings at Abbotts Auction Rooms' (12% buyer's premium) otherwise fairly routine, 438-lot September 8 sale were enlivened by a couple of novel entries.

THE sale of a Shakespeare First Folio is a rare event, but the sale of a copy that emerged out of nowhere is something that comes around only once in a generation.