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UK: DELAYED news from tools specialist auctioneers David Stanley Auctions (buyer’s premium 10 per cent) focuses on this rare coach builder’s plough or grooving plane, right, constructed in ebony, brass and steel and probably made by Thomas Falconer around c.1840.

UK: A PERMANENT exhibition space for objects from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg is to be part of the continuing development of London’s Somerset House as an arts complex.

UK: THE unknown British soldier who embroidered the crude depiction of his lonely blockhouse on the South African veld almost a century ago, could hardly have expected his work to end up on the hallowed walls of the National Army Museum in Chelsea, having provoked intense competition from international bidders at Bosley’s auction of militaria in Marlow on October 12.

UK: A heart-shaped London delft pill slab of c.1660-70, 12 x 10in (30 x 25cm), painted in blue, ochre and turquoise with the arms of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.

UK: THERE remains some serious money available for the rarest of the Royal Doulton HN series figures as was seen at this Lincolnshire sale when one of the first of the Harry Nixon series was offered.

Phillips were making no comment last week following confident assertions in the Financial Times that a French takeover of the last of the top three auctioneers under UK ownership was imminent.

UK: AS yet there are no signs that game fishing is to become an endangered sport to follow hunting and shooting, not that the market for angling collectables is floundering on the bank of public indifference.

UK: ABOUT 30 years ago a local private lady purchased this 5.2in (13cm) high Charles II flat-lidded silver tankard, pictured right, for £6 at a Cumbrian jumble sale: a generation later, having realised its potential worth, she decided to place the vessel into the hands of the Cumbrian auctioneers Penrith Farmers’ & Kidd’s (10 per cent buyer’s premium) for their sale on September 29.

UK: THE world record auction price for a photograph was broken twice at the Sotheby’s London sale of the Photographic Collection of Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes on October 27.

EU: THE British Art Market Federation wants the European Union to abandon its bid to impose the artists’ resale rights on the UK after member states again failed to vote on the measure on Thursday.

UK: HUGH Scully, Antiques Roadshow presenter since 1981, has signed a five-year deal with internet auction house QXL.com, worth £3m.

SWEDEN at the end of the 19th century was the birthplace of notable inventors of mechanical music who later made their fortunes in America.

THE International art auction market registered a 3.5 per cent increase for the year ending September 1, 1999, according to Art Sales Index figures.

UK: THIS pair of vases, 11in (28cm) high, from the sideboard of a house in Herstmonceux, East Sussex, set a new record for Moorcroft when they appeared at Gorringes Lewes on October 19.

US: PROFITS from the catalogue for Christie’s New York’s October 27 and 28 Marilyn Monroe auction may bring as much as the sale itself.

NETHERLANDS: Van Gogh’s oil landscape A Park in Spring, was the highlight of the inaugural exhibition to mark the opening of Sotheby’s new Netherlands headquarters on October 15.

EIRE: The long-awaited auction of one of Ireland’s foremost collections took place in Dublin on October 14 when Mealy’s, in association with Christie’s, dispersed the contents of 25 Fitzwilliam Street Upper, former residence of the late James Murnaghan, a Justice of the Supreme Court and chairman of the National Gallery of Ireland.

GERMANY: THE German Society of Auctioneers, Der Bundesverband Deutscher Kunstversteigerer is mounting a legal challenge to prevent Internet auction firms from advertising their sales in Germany as public auctions or sales.

UK: LADY Charlotte Schreiber was a celebrated 19th century collector numbering ceramics, enamels and fans amongst her passions.

UK: Charles Napier Hemy’s seascape Life 4ft 6in x 6ft (1.24m x 1.83m), signed and dated 1913, with reverse inscription, set a record for Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis on October 12 when it sold for a double mid-estimate £110,000 plus premium.