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Standing in the same spot where he had placed the winning £3.25m bid for an Egyptian statue of Isis six months before, London dealer Daniel Katz was again in action at Christie’s South Kensington’s latest antiquities sale.

The ambitious project that made 210,000 publicly-owned oil, tempera and acrylic paintings available to view online for free has taken another important step forward thanks to winning £125,000 funding.

It has a face value of ten shillings but a price tag of Aus$3.5m (£2.3m) at Coinworks, the specialist dealers and auctioneers of Melbourne.

Two auction houses are joining forces in the latest shake-up to affect the Melbourne scene.

Last week was a busy one for glass and ceramics in the London rooms with five auctions taking place over the space of 48 hours and some bullish prices for top pieces.

Paris auctioneers Gros & Delettrez have announced the sale of 350 lots of haute couture from Danielle Luquet de Saint Germain, muse to the late Yves Saint Laurent in the 1960s, and later an artistic advisor at Dior.

The original autograph draft manuscript for Gerard Manley Hopkins’ 1879 poem ‘Binsey Poplars’ has been acquired by the Bodleian Libraries.

A single pearl-drop earring worn by Charles I at his execution in 1649, a maharaja’s coat richly embroidered with pearls c.1870, and a necklace of cultured pearls given to Marilyn Monroe by Joe DiMaggio in 1954 – all part of an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum this autumn.

Fellows’ latest quarterly Vintage & Modern Wristwatch auction included a rare 1940s Rolex Oyster, the so-called ‘monobloc’ chronograph.

Art dealer Hillel ‘Helly’ Nahmad, the high-profile owner of the Helly Nahmad Gallery in New York, has been named on a list of people charged with running an illegal gambling business.

One of the highlights of the latest raft of Islamic auctions in London was an unusual half-moon-shaped 10th/11th century granite temple step from Sri Lanka which had spent years in a Devon garden.

MK Auctions are selling a Flemish verdure tapestry at their sale on May 5.

Featuring only 22 lots, Sotheby’s latest sale of Orientalist art was a small affair but one that definitely packed a big punch.

A major new marketplace or simply a case of wishful thinking? That was the question as the Association of Accredited Auctioneers (Triple-A) and their Beijing-based partners, Huachen Auctions, held a much-heralded auction in south east China.

Recent years have seen a massive increase in the offerings and prices realised by banknotes.

This previously unrecorded late work by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-97), ‘Landscape with Rainbow’, sold for £125,000 at Bellmans in Wisborough Green, West Sussex.

The Charles Le Brun oil on canvas discovered hanging in the Paris Hôtel Ritz proved to be the high point of Christie’s latest sale of Old Master and 19th century paintings in Paris.

A new auction high for Qing Kangxi porcelain was established in Sotheby’s latest spring sale series in Hong Kong.

Fear that the dramatic fall in scrap gold and silver prices last week would hit the antiques market appear to have been allayed.