Recoveries

A group of Martinware pottery items stolen across two break-ins back in 2005 and 2007 from buildings owned by Ealing Council are still missing but there are hopes some can be recovered.

Rare books stolen in a ‘Mission: Impossible-style’ raid on a warehouse in west London in 2017 have been returned after a joint operation with Met police officers and Romanian authorities.

A 15th century Chinese vase valued at around £2.5m has been recovered in London by the Met Police.

A collection of glazed tiles believed to be 14th century examples from a memorial complex near Samarkand are to be returned to Uzbekistan.

The Metropolitan Police’s Art and Antiques Unit have helped recover three 15th century Indian bronze sculptures after one was identified in the possession of a UK dealer.

A collection of rare books valued at more than £2.5m and stolen from a London warehouse in 2017 has been recovered in Romania.

An Old Master painting restored to the family of its original Jewish owner will be offered at Sotheby’s next week with an estimate of £3m-4m.

Arts Council England has appointed the Institute of Art and Law to help form new guidance for institutions around the thorny issues of restitution and repatriation of cultural objects.

A Japanese museum has claimed it bought a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds “in good faith and without fault from a respectable art dealer” after it was identified as being stolen from a UK stately home.

The FBI’s art crime team and auction house Christie’s have returned a pair of Louis XVI bronze vases that were stolen by the Nazis to the heirs of the original Jewish owners.

Six-hundred rare books, manuscripts and prints which were lost or stolen from a German library during the Second World War have been returned after they were consigned to Sotheby’s.

A Pablo Picasso painting missing for nearly 20 years has been recovered by the so-called real-life ‘Indiana Jones’ of the art world.

A cathedral in Germany has returned a painting that was seized by the Nazis in 1941 to the heirs of its original Jewish owners. The work had entered the collection of Adolf Hitler’s photographer Heinrich Hoffmann and was found among the numerous works he kept in a castle in Bavaria at the end of the Second World War.

A group of eight antiquities that was consigned to Christie’s has been returned to Italy after the works were identified as not having the necessary export and provenance details to be sold.