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IT is not often that an antiques dealer ends up on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery, but until September 19 that is just what is happening.

SHEER decorative exuberance helped this Roman mosaic panel, c.2nd century AD, right, sell to an American private collector for $260,000 (£141,305), almost triple the upper estimate at Sotheby’s New York (20/12% buyer's premium) sale of June 9.

AT Scarborough Perry Fine Arts' (15% buyer's premium) June 24-25 sale, auctioneer Stephen Perry, who had given a distressed Regency painted settee sofa a modest pre-sale estimate of £400, admitted ruefully after seeing it go for ten times that amount: “I can value furniture in general but I find it difficult to value interior decorator’s pieces.”

REGULAR sales of toys, dolls and bears are among the specialist categories pinpointed for expansion by Brightwells (15% buyer’s premium) of Leominster.

IN the same week that Sotheby’s and Christie’s were offering their summer selections of English furniture, Bonhams’ Bond Street (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) offered a 224-lot English and Continental mix that also incorporated a sizeable selection of works of art. The broader mix didn’t result in a higher take-up: selling rates for this July 29 event were 54 per cent by lot and 65 in money on a £640,440 total.

LEOMINSTER auctioneer Brightwells will offer the lifetime collection of recorded sound enthusiast Don Watson, in a single vendor sale on July 29.

DAVID Teniers the Younger’s whimsical 6 x 8 1/2in (16 x 22cm), oil on copper view of Monkeys Playing Cards, sold to a private buyer against the London trade for a double-estimate €220,000 (£146,665) at Tajan on June 24.

THE forerunners of their kind may have been a relatively humble form of seating, but, as two lots in the recent English furniture sales showed, it wasn’t long before the Windsor chair began to branch out.

DECORATIVE, functional and large – the undisputed highlight of Andrew Grant's (15% buyer's premium) 525-lot May 13 sale was a gilt-framed hall mirror catalogued as in the manner of William Kent.

THE Paris firm of Bourgey was founded in Paris in 1895. Now under the direction of the granddaughter of the founder, Sabine Bourgey, it is still going strong if the recent sale on June 3 is anything to go by.

SAIREY Gamp and Tony Weller are two of the most commonly encountered Royal Doulton character jugs (and accordingly among the cheapest) but only very rarely are the two Dickens’ characters seen as bookends.

PROBABLY the best-known and the most coveted of the novelty table lighters made by the Ronson Lighter Co. is the 1936 patent Touch-Tip Bartender.

THE railways themselves may not be as dependable as they were, but you can absolutely count on Sheffield Railwayana Auctions coming up with the goods. June 12 saw the specialists, who still don’t charge buyer’s premium, steaming along to a £438,000 total from 530 lots.

BOUND in contemporary vellum, a 1681 first of Tel Ignea Satanae... [The Fiery Darts of Satan] by Johann Christoph Wagenseil was sold for £1000 (Powell) in an Y Gelli sale of June 11.

THE highlight of Christie's (20.93/11.96% buyer's premium) sale on June 14 was this 16in (40cm) high Benin bronze plaque (c.1580-1620), right, featuring a warrior chief, brandishing a sceptre in his right hand and a short eben sword in his left. The plaque, formerly owned by Edgar Dimsey, a surgeon on the British punitive expedition to Benin in February 1897, retained sharp detailing and sold to a European collector for a hefty €450,000 (£300,000) against an estimate of €150,000-200,000.

WEST Country foodies will no doubt be aware that the two-star Michelin chef John Burton Race and his family (they of French Leave fame) have recently moved to Devon to take over the famous Carved Angel restaurant in Dartmouth from Joyce Molyneux. Burton Race is planning a refurbishment and will rename the restaurant the New Angel in reference to its new mascot, a glass sculpture of an angel with a sword commissioned from the nearby Dartington factory.

BEFORE the acceptance of the clay pigeon (patented in 1880) as the most suitable target for skeet shooting, there was glass ball shooting. Thought to originate in Britain in the 1830s, but quickly spreading to the United States, shooting at uniform spherical glass target balls was a recognised Victorian pastime that gathered momentum following the invention in 1877 of a trap capable of casting a missile through the air in a long arc.

FOLLOWING last year’s inaugural, successful summer show of graduate student’s work, The Metal Gallery at 90 Mount Street, London W1 have declared this an annual event and this year’s selling exhibition, The Graduate 2004, will run from July 21 to September 11.

THERE were few head-turners at Greenslade Taylor Hunt's (15% buyer's premium) 738-lot specialist book and clock sale on May 13, with dealers and collectors bidding selectively for the best quality works.

PICTURED right is a 2ft 1in (64cm) Jacobean amputation saw made by Robert Hobbs that is appearing at a sale at the Cedars Hotel in Stowmarket, Suffolk on July 30.