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Humberts, inc. Tayler & FletcherBourton-on-the-Water, October 26Buyer’s premium: 10 per cent

By Kate Hunt WHILE large dispersals of clocks have always been rarities outside of the major London rooms, the West Country is becoming a new spot on the dial. Like Bath-based Gardiner Houlgate (see last week’s ATG), the auctioneers formerly known as The Bristol Auction Galleries, who now operate under the Dreweatt Neate banner, have built a good private as well as a trade following for the triannual specialist clock sections included in their antique sales.

The small group of Sir Isaac Newton’s manuscripts and papers offered by Sotheby’s New York on December 3 were not for the most part concerned with the work that will forever ensure his fame – although an autograph draft of a letter concerning the presentation of six copies of the 1726, third edition of the Principia to the Académie Royale des Sciences sold at $28,000 (£14,560).

Arts Council England have launched Own Art, a new national interest-free loan scheme to encourage people to buy art.

BK Art & Antiques, Gloucester, November 11Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent

THERE is growing speculation in the trade that the government’s reform of the pension industry is likely to have a significant effect on the art and antiques market.

Breaking its own record as the most expensive piece of furniture ever sold at auction, this massive, 12ft 8in (3.86m) high, 18th century Florentine ebony, ormolu and pietra dura architectural display piece known as The Badminton Cabinet brought Christie’s December 9 sale of European furniture to a dramatic climax last week when it sold for £17m (£19,045,250 including premium).

Pick up a copy of a Beswick price guide from the late 1990s and it will tell you that the Galloway Bull, designed by Arthur Gredington, was made in three versions.

Troika is known for two distinctly different styles – the rough textured wares of which the Cycladic masks are now the most celebrated and the scarcer Brancusi-style smooth monochromatic glazed wares that reveal a rather different aesthetic.

A STUNNING early Ming dynasty dish has equalled the highest price ever paid at auction for a piece of Chinese porcelain.

PAUL VINEY of Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis helped to raise a massive sum for this year’s Children in Need Appeal by conducting an auction of promises on the Wake up with Wogan programme on Radio 2.

Tom Pearse, Tom Pearse, lend me your grey mare, All along, down along, out along lee, For I want to go to Widecombe Fair, With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan Whiddon, Harry Hawke, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.The traditional song Widecombe Fair was well known in Devon around the middle of the 19th century, as was the name Thomas Cobley Gent, of Buttsford, Colebrooke.

EBAY users are being warned to look out for the Second Chance Offer scam that is among the latest frauds to hit the online marketplace. In this ruse, scammers impersonating eBay sellers target disappointed underbidders of high-price lots claiming to offer them the ‘second chance’ to buy the lot.

A novelty locomotive sweet container for Chlorodyne Lozenges (probably some form of cough drop) proved a star attraction at Richard Winterton’s December 1 collectors’ auction in Burton on Trent last week.

CHRISTIE'S are to increase their buyer’s premium. With effect from January 1, 2005, the current 19.5 per cent premium which is charged on the first £70,000/$100,000/€110,000 will increase by 0.5 per cent to 20 per cent at almost all Christie’s sites.

A HANDFUL of factors make this Coxon Aerial fishing reel among the best of its type.

ESTABLISHING a new landmark for any work of art sold at auction outside London, a family portrait by Francis Hayman (1708-1776) took £540,000 at John Nicholson’s Fernhurst salerooms last week.

BUYING and selling antique swords may soon become illegal in Scotland. As part of proposals to tackle knife crime North of the Border, Scotland’s First Minister, Jack McConnell, announced his intention to ban the sale of swords and introduce a licence for the sale of non-domestic knives.

THE gap between the French and American art markets has dramatically widened in the past two years.

THE Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has acquired a devotional panel of the Madonna and Child by Duccio di Buoninsegna (active by 1278; died 1319) from the Stoclet family in Brussels.