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UK: CUTTING EDGE is the title of a major cutlery exhibition opening at Fairfax House in Castlegate, York, on September 1. The display, which will remain on show until December 30, before moving to the Millennium Galleries in Sheffield and then, in March next year, the Geffrye Museum in London, covers “5000 years of man and knife”.

August may be an unlikely month to find unusual Asian entries in London’s salerooms, but Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) regular Asian Decorative Arts sale, August 16, threw up two quirky 19th century Chinese blue and white bottle vases and covers, 121/4in (31cm) high, made for the Tibetan market.

AS Sotheby’s announced their plans for Billingshurst, they also revealed disappointing worldwide results for the second quarter of the year that showed profits halved ($14.3m compared to $30m for 2000). They predicted a loss for the year as a whole.

CHRISTIE’S kept ahead of Sotheby’s in worldwide sales, recording a total of £681m ($974m) for the first six months compared to Sotheby’s £659m ($942.9m) – a gap of three per cent.

US-based Ableauctions have made an offer to acquire fellow online auctions firm ICollector in a share swap deal that values ICollector at £9.8m ($13.9m).

MEMORIES of the Raj were the selling point at the collectors’ sale held at Amersham Auction Rooms (15% buyer’s premium) on July 5 which included pieces acquired by Lord William Hailey during his Governorship of the Punjab during the 1920s.

AMONG the earlier travel books in the June 14 sale held by Pacific Book Auctions was a 1632 first edition of Bernal Diaz del Castillo’s famous first-hand account of the conquest of Mexico, Historia Verdadera de la Conquesta de la Nueva-España. An ex-Nottingham Free Library copy in a 20th century quarter morocco binding, it had stamps to the title and other pages and a few other shortcomings of condition, but it is an important work and sold at $5000 (£3625).

UK: Good stock furniture usually provides the highlights at these Michael J. Bowman Devon rooms but there was little of real quality among the 511 lots in July and, reflecting current caution among trade buyers, it was left to classics in other sections to produce the better results.

UK: One of the highlights of Christie’s South Kensington’s antique arms and armour sale on July 19 was this interesting Indian-made group, comprising pistols and a sporting gun from the Lucknow Arsenal.

The estate of the widow of Professor H.B. Acton, a former Professor of Philosophy at Edinburgh University, provided the Scottish and Cumbrian auctioneers Thomson Roddick & Medcalf (15% buyer’s premium) with an attractive group of 20 Modern British lots to put before bidders at The Royal Scots Club in Edinburgh on July 25.

Ebony furniture is not to everyone’s taste, but a fished-out brown furniture market and a couple of colonial sleepers in the regional salerooms recently has prompted speculation that the black stuff could be due for a revival.

AS dealers and collectors of antique arms and armour converged on London to do battle in the salerooms of Christie’s and Bonhams a skirmish was taking place 50 miles away in the Oxford salerooms of Phillips (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) on July 18, where a field of 245 lots included these two members of the East Kent Regiment.

A RECORD turnout on July 13 gave the Hampshire auctioneers Jacobs & Hunt reason to hope that the market is finally beginning to perk up although it was more specialist items, rather than general furniture, which were of most interest.

After 15 years of holding picture sales at Billingshurst, Sotheby’s (20/15/10% buyer’s premium) will, from December this year, be holding all their mid-range art auctions in their new saleroom at Olympia.

THE Law Fine Art sale at Southington House, a country house near Overton, Hampshire, had everything you might expect to find in a home lived in by one family for over a century.

“Good but second-rate Old Master paintings bought for their images rather than their names” was an accurate enough assessment by auctioneer Richard Kay of the pictures on offer in Lawrence’s (15% buyer’s premium) July 16 sale of the contents of Horsington Manor, Templecombe, Somerset on July 16.

The well-documented English love of teddy bears was the main feature of the June 27 sale of the toys, dolls, bears and juvenilia sale at the Knowle rooms of Phillips (15% buyer’s premium).

Shown right is a previously unknown miniature Book of Hours illuminated by Simon Bening, whose contemporary reputation as “the best master in the art of illumination in all Europe” has remained unchallenged over five centuries.

Probably written within a generation of the death (in 1279) of the author, Conrad of Saxony, a charming and almost perfectly preserved manuscript containing his Speculum Mariae Virginis and other sermons or texts in praise of the Virgin was another of the highlights of the manuscripts from the Ritman collection sold at Sotheby’s – and one with a distinguished provenance.

Candy Art Pottery by Ian Turner, published by Hillian Press, the Old Brewery, 12 Church Street, Melbourne, Derbyshire DE73 1EJ. Tel: 01332 862629. email: hian@turnermel.fsnet.co.uk ISBN 09539750X. £22 (£20 plus £2 p&p).