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Abstinence was a ceremonial requirement prior to worshipping the ancestors, the heavens or other deities in the Qing court.

Setting a major house record at South London auctioneers Rosebery’s, this oil painting by Léon Bakst (1866-1924) drew eight interested parties at the West Norwood saleroom last week.

Henri Gros, partner in the Paris auctioneers Gros & Delettrez, has been suspended for two months for accepting €200,000 in small denomination notes from a Chinese buyer after the Paul-Louis Weiller sale in April 2011.

What must be one of the most iconic racing cars ever to come up for sale will be offered by Bonhams at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on July 12.

Bonhams have announced that they have secured potentially the most valuable lot among the works being sold from the Dr. Gustav Rau collection.

A rare linocut by Cyril Power (1874-1951) leads the sale of Modern & Contemporary prints at Bloomsbury Auctions in London on June 27.

Previously on loan to the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, this unusually large Jiaqing (1796-1820) period export porcelain punch bowl decorated with the Cholmondeley of Vale Royal coat of arms sold for £43,000 at nearby Saltney saleroom Byrne’s this week.

A large depiction of a magician commanded significant attention at Mellors & Kirk’s sale in Nottingham earlier today.

Three men who hid a £5m antiques haul taken from three country homes will be sentenced in a month’s time after the last of the gang admitted his guilt.

The Oxford Conference for auctioneers and valuers launched last autumn by Rupert Toovey and Jeremy Lamond will be repeated this year on Friday and Saturday, September 13-14, based at the Ashmolean Museum with lectures in the Taylor Institute adjacent to the museum campus.

Is this Elkington kettle the earliest provable Christopher Dresser design for electroplated silver?

The Christopher Dresser Society will be launched at Teesside University on June 20.

Two items of silver stolen from a Worcestershire house have been returned to the owner after a dealer recognised one of them from an alert in ATG.

A sickle-leaf carpet from the William A. Clark collection has set a new auction record for a Persian carpet after selling for $30m (£20.5m) at Sotheby’s New York.

Three men who were responsible for a sophisticated credit card fraud which targeted auction houses across the country have now been sentenced.

The latest series of Russian art auctions in London set a combined hammer total of £42.7m to make it the most lucrative since the market peaked in June 2008.

Warwickshire saleroom Bigwood of Teddington, Stratford-on-Avon sold this mid 19th century whalebone cane for an extraordinary £27,000 at their latest sale.

These tiny Chinese agate carvings jointly estimated at just £200-300 stole the show at Woolley & Wallis’ Asian series when they sold for 500 times the top guide in a packed saleroom in Salisbury.

A Lonsdale Belt awarded to Welsh heavyweight boxing champion Jack Petersen has been stolen from his son’s home.

This tour de force of the Victorian glass craftsman’s art was the highlight of Bonhams’ mixed-owner British and European glass sale.