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UK: Some fishermen claim that pike have an appetite for human flesh – the elderly members of a crown green bowling club in Warrington say this stuffed and mounted 201b monster has been responsible for several fatalities among their anoraked colleagues in recent years.

UK: A key feature of the Bloomsbury Book Auctions sale of April 5 was a private collection of the works of A.A. Milne.

UK: Mouseman – the name resounds beyond the world of arts and crafts furniture.

UK: One of this year’s most stunning finds, a group of four rare Sèvres Etruscan red ground dessert plates from the Prince Napoleon Service, 1854-6, offered at Mellors and Kirk, Nottingham, on April 5.

UK: Sworders, Stansted: A mammoth 1200 lots made up the March dispersal by the Essex auctioneers and there were some real quality pieces among them, both in the ceramics and the furniture.

UK: MARCH was a busy month in London and successful with it. On the 15th, Spink (15 per cent buyer’s premium) sold the definitive collection of Tudor silver coins formed over several decades by Roger Shuttlewood.

ORIENTAL rug expert Simon Crosby had launched a global appeal after his cleaning woman made off with part of his collection.

UK: One of the least prepossessing lots, but obviously rare and among the more sought after of the day’s offerings, was a small handbill recording the plague tally and burial record for the Cambridge colleges from Christmas Day 1666 to New Year’s Day 1667.

UK: ARTS Minister Alan Howarth has become increasingly active in placing temporary bans on the export of works of art

Few businesses can boast the sort of charitable contributions of Tomlinson Antiques, the furniture wholesaler of Tockwith, North Yorkshire.

Sotheby’s find a warm welcome in Wales with record bid and active museum interest UK: THE strong, and occasionally extraordinary, demand for Celtic art, both Scottish and Irish, has been a feature of the art market for years and has warranted specialist picture sales devoted to those country’s painters.

To what extent the bouyant market for Gaudy Welsh pottery would become deflated if every American collector realised it was actually made in Staffordshire, England, not Wales, is a pertinent question – given the misty eyed view of Scottish/Welsh/Irish history from the other side of pond.

NOT one of the best silver and jewellery sales ever to have been held at Phillips, Leeds – most entries sold at under £1000 – there was nevertheless some keen buying with a very satisfactory 89 per cent success rate and the occasional prized item.

In a Bloomsbury Book Auctions sale reported earlier (Antiques Trade Gazette No. 1485, April 21, 2001) I mentioned a bid of £2800 on a 1930 (German text) Cranach Press edition of Hamlet, but at Sotheby’s on April 5, as part of the John Gielgud Collection, a copy of the English text version made very much more than that.

UK: SMALLER than usual at 412 lots – the Sussex floods earlier in the year having distracted potential vendors – the March sale at Henry Adams’ Chichester rooms was nevertheless strong on quality, which is what buyers want.

UK: NINETEENTH century genre paintings with strong narrative and moralising elements have not been the strongest performers at auction in recent years.

UK: A CHANNEL Islands collection formed by Sir Martin Le Quesne occupied the first 108 lots of the catalogue issued by Bloomsbury Book Auctions for their March 15 sale.

There was the familiar wide mix and flash of quality at this Dales auctioneers’ weekly sale, where the top price came from a piece over the Pennines – an 18th century yew wood dresser base that had originally graced a pub in Blackpool.

UK: RESOURCEFULNESS is a characteristic of the successful dealer, and there are occasions where profit margins can be improved by, say, slipping an extra leaf into a dining table, or turning a dressing table into one of those rare kidney-shaped desks.

EIRE: WITH the traditional Irish sales due in London next month, many an eye was on the Dublin sale held by James Adams (15 per cent buyer’s premium) on March 28 to see how pictures were selling in their native land.