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Westminster City Council has put its weight behind the art and antiques dealers of London’s Church Street with a series of initiatives designed to encourage growth of the sector.

A coalition of California auction houses fighting to reword a new law governing the sale of autographed collectables has cleared its first legal hurdle.

A grand piano commissioned by George IV in 1821 is to return to Brighton Pavilion after it sold for £62,000 at Piano Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) in London on April 6.

Auctioneers and vendors are quickly discovering that Europe’s country houses, furnished with the routine period objects that no longer generate great excitement, can occasionally yield valuable souvenirs of a colonial past.

Former Bonhams and Christie’s specialist Mark Wilkinson is to join Sworders to launch new specialist sales at the Essex auction house. Wilkinson spent over 30 years at Christie’s and led its ‘interiors’ auctions at South Kensington.

Christie’s is to open a new Los Angeles premises this month in Beverly Hills to bolster its presence on the west coast of the US.

Pinball machines, Francis Bacon paintbrushes and bear skeletons: is Essex ready for an Out of the Ordinary sale? Sworders managing director Guy Schooling believes so. He has just hired former Bonhams and Christie’s specialist Mark Wilkinson to launch a series of specialist sales at the Stansted Mountfitchet auction house.

Maastricht in March. It’s difficult to think of anything other than TEFAF within this setting, but one local dealer has established his own tradition, coinciding with but apart from the fair.

The March 29 sale by Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) of books from the library at Glyn Cywarch featured many highlights.

From noble jewels to semi-precious gems, a show in May will celebrate a ‘golden period’ of Portuguese jewellery in the 18th century. Here we preview the exhibition and then present other recent and forthcoming sale highlights.

This Tiffany gold necklace and earclip suite composed of textured rose petal links by Angela Cummings (c.1944) sold for £10,200 at Bonhams Knightsbridge (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on March 15.

Torn, punched with holes, creased, wrinkled and showing loss at the folds, an ‘Organizational Clothing and Equipment Record’ used at Fort Hood, Texas, in 1958 would not at first sight seem an attractive proposition.

Three high-quality sales from the north to the south gave a cheerful air to spring. The catalogue at Tennants in North Yorkshire pretty much covered the range but in Sussex and Buckinghamshire the emphasis was on furniture.

In the chapter titled ‘Modern Jewellery’ in her taste-making book, The Art of Beauty (1878), English writer Mary Eliza Haweis references the “artistic appreciation of good forms and good work” she found at Messrs Phillips of Cockspur Street.

The apparent decline in passing trade is a subject occupying the minds of many shop-owning dealers. But some, such as Brentford’s Hill House, have taken matters into their own hands by staging promotional events to encourage attendance.

Among the raft of dedicated works on paper auctions staged for the recent Drawings Week in Paris were two market-fresh sales devoted to family collections of works by a single French artist.

MADAM – As someone with a foot in both artist and auctioneer camps, I’d like to add a contrary view to the often one-sided debate on Artist’s Resale Right (ATG No 2287).

Dominated as they were by furniture, the March sales at Lewes and Donnington Priory included other highlights.

A late 19th century/early 20th century ruby cameo and baroque pearl pendant once formed part of the celebrated jewellery collection assembled by Ganna Walska (1887-1984). It sold for a multi-estimate £55,000 at Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of fine jewels in Bond Street on March 22.

While Degas’ youthful drawings produced some notable individual prices in Drawings Week, it is the classic charcoal and pastel drawings of Parisian dancers and workers from his mature years that are the most commercially popular (the current work on paper record is the premium-inclusive $37m/ £23.35m/€29m paid for Danseuse au repos of 1879 at Sotheby’s New York in 2008).