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Quarterly sales of modestly-priced art and antiques, which were introduced for the first time this year by leading Shropshire auction house Halls, are to become a regular fixture in the company’s sales calendar.

As experienced art dealers discussed the £95.6m sale of 233 new works by Damien Hirst (b.1965), it was the word 'celebrity' that cropped up the most to explain the phenomenal prices seen at the Beautiful Inside my Head Forever sale.

CHRISTIE’S have announced that their sale of the joint stock of the two London dealerships Hotspur and Jeremy will be at a dedicated auction at their King Street rooms on November 20.

PRE-COLOMBIAN art valued at €5m in total was withdrawn from sale in Paris on September 12 after the last-minute intervention of the Mexican Embassy.

Trading Standards say they have received a number of complaints from unpaid consignors in the wake of the fine art sale held by Walker Barnett & Hill in June.

MORE than £80,000 worth of jewellery was stolen from the Ardingly Showground on Wednesday, September 3.

THE British Art Market Federation and other campaigners are cautiously optimistic that the government will agree not to extend the Artist’s Resale Right to the heirs of artists who have been dead for less than 70 years until 2012.

The Tate announced a record year for acquisitions in their 2007/8 Annual Report. The Tate Collection aquired 494 works, valued at £63.1m, of which 320 were gifts and bequests from collectors and artists.

This large three-section glass panel was designed and made by Paul Jefferies at the Whitefriars factory in 1966.

THE instability of stock markets led to sharp rises in the price of gold last week as investors took to buying precious metals as a safe haven from the financial turmoil seen across the globe.

Phillips de Pury’s Hip Hop Crown Jewels auction scheduled for October 1 in New York has been postponed until March 5, 2009.

Following a confidential agreement between the parties involved, the Fatimid rock crystal ewer ‘sold’ for £220,000 at Lawrences of Crewkerne will reappear at Christie’s next month with an estimate of over £3m.

Spink are to offer a £1m Treasury Note. Dated London 30 August 1948, and printed with the red serial number 000008, it is one of only two surviving examples from the nine thought to have been printed in connection with the Marshall Plan.

In October, South London auctioneers Rosebery’s will be conducting their inaugural auction in St James’s.

The British Library has secured the oldest surviving roll of arms in English history after a successful fundraising effort to keep it in the UK. The Dering Roll dates from the last quarter of the 13th century and depicts 324 coats of arms, approximately a quarter of the English baronage during the time of Edward I, making it a vital record for the study of heraldry in medieval England.

FIONA Bruce's debut as presenter of the BBC's Antiques Roadshow on Sunday, September 7 saw an average of 6.1m viewers across the 8pm hour-long shot.

TOTAL exports outside the European Union of art and antiques from the UK remained static in 2007, while total imports rose by seven per cent. However, the details show a more dramatic picture in some sectors, indicating, perhaps above all, the effect of the weak dollar against the pound.

Dreweatts are to begin holding sales again in Godalming, Surrey. The former Hamptons salerooms, acquired by The Fine Art Auction Group in 2005, have operated only as an origination and valuation office since January 2007 but will return to action on October 28 with a catalogue of silver and jewellery.