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SCIENTISTS in Australia have developed a new method of identifying of ancient Chinese ceramics which could play a major role in the battle against fakes.

SOTHEBY’S Institute are backing a new web initiative to improve interest and knowledge in art and antiques.

Places are still available for this October on the MA course in Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors, based at the Wallace Collection.

Stained glass windows are not common fare in sales of English literature but the 2ft 8in (81cm) wide panel seen at Sotheby’s on July 12 merited inclusion on account of both its designer and its subject matter.

The well-known Worcestershire firm Andrew Grant are expected to close their fine art auction department.

Charles Hanson, formerly of Wintertons, launches his own auction business next month.

A much-publicised decision to devalue their stock by £10m, is the headline figure of the six-monthly accounts published by Partridge Fine Arts.

Auctioneers in Essex are being asked to exercise extra vigilence after Colchester auctioneers Reeman Dansie had an unwelcome visitor return to their salerooms on August 9.

Lincolnshire auctioneers Golding Young established a new house record on August 10 when they sold this superb mahogany breakfront side cabinet right for £135,000 (plus 15 per cent buyer’s premium).

A DECADE after the Thurn und Taxis and Baden Baden sales in the 1990s, Sotheby’s are once again decamping to a German castle to stage another mammoth aristocratic auction.

At first glance there’s nothing very exciting at all about this Prattware pot lid.

Despite a substantial fall in total sales, increases in buyer’s premium and vendor’s commission margins helped Sotheby’s post record revenues for the second quarter of 2005.

Personnel changes are afoot in the silver departments of two of London’s major auction houses.

Bloomsbury Auctions report that their new departments have helped them achieve a 60 per cent rise in turnover year on year for the first half of 2005.

The latest round of golf sales held up in Scotland threw up a now-familiar pattern of mixed results.

A TRAVELLING exhibition is to be organised for the unique Cassel silver collection thanks to major grants from the Lottery and the National Art Collections Fund (Art Fund).

Long before J.R.R. Tolkien settled down to write The Hobbit, he had acquired a postcard reproduction of the ink, watercolour and gouache painting Der Berggeist (The Mountain Spirit).

Longcases sell well after prices hit plateauTHE 530 lots offered at Dreweatt Neate’s Bristol rooms in June covered most areas of the antiques trade with the exception of ceramics, but the sale was always going to be dominated by the strong 44-lot clocks section.

THE unexpected success of the pair of library chairs discussed above led the way at the Wisborough Green saleroom, but there was keen action, mainly in the three-figure range, across the three days when 1800 lots were offered.

TWO lots stood out among the 600 lots offered at Hampshire. One was an 18th century matched pair of brass barrelled flintlock pistols signed Burnford, London, which, because of a missing ramrod and broken trigger mechanism were catalogued a/f but sold to a collector at a quadruple estimate £1600.