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It may look like a textbook early 19th century silver teaset, but this unprepossessing three-piece service seen at Tennants of Leyburn, North Yorkshire on November 17-19 carried marks later identified as those of the early Australian silversmith Alexander Dick (c.1791-1843).

Lowestoft porcelain specialist and Suffolk auctioneer Russell Sprake marked 50 years in the auction business last month with perhaps his finest ever sale – and a record price for the factory at auction.

THE days of informal scrapping of precious metals such as gold and silver could well be numbered after a new Bill was put before Parliament on November 15 to tackle theft.

TWO years since it launched, the jewellery trade’s anti-crime alert network, SaferGems, has been helping to forge stronger links between the UK’s 43 different police forces.

ONE SaferGems alert featured two men wanted in connection with a jewellery theft at a discount jewellery shop in Spring Bank, Hull. During the incident one offender distracted the jeweller while the other stole jewellery to the value of £2300.

COMPETITION between major collectors and new players in the market for L.S. Lowry saw a host of dramatic prices in London last week as Christie's offered 14 works from the collection of the late hotel magnate Lord Forte.

RAMRAIDERS have smashed their way into the Court Barn Museum, home to the Guild of Handicrafts collection, and stolen unique pieces of silver.

IN a world where instant electronic communication and exchange of information is available to all, two lengths of original Morse code ticker-tape seem akin to tele-antiquities.

ESTABLISHING a satisfactory relationship with a bank appears to be one of the major difficulties facing art and antiques dealers in the current economic climate.

SOTHEBY’S latest set of results showed the sustained resilience of the global art market against the backdrop of general economic turmoil.

ATG Editor-in-Chief Mark Bridge, centre, announced the winners of the Antiques Trade Gazette 2011 Awards for outstanding works of art on sale during Asian Art in London at the Gala Party in The Dome at the Victoria and Albert Museum on November 8.

MORTON & Eden are to auction a hoard of American gold coins discovered in the garden of an East London home where they were buried in fear of a Nazi invasion.

ALL things Asian were in the spotlight in London last week as the capital celebrated Asian Art in London, with a raft of dealers' shows and specialist auctions.

ARE you the owner of an antiques shop, vintage shop, antiques centre or auction house? Are you keen to be nominated as one of Britain’s best antiques shops? There have been 1900 nominations so far.

A SERIES of key consignments at the latest Contemporary art auctions helped lift the mood of the art market in New York.

A NEW live auction platform which will give UK auctioneers direct access to Chinese bidders has been launched in Beijing.

SETTING a house record at Cotswolds saleroom Tayler & Fletcher and helping them to their highest ever sale total, this small and previously unrecorded portrait by Anders Zorn (1860-1920), fetched £82,000 in Cheltenham.

WHILE most reports in the media focused on the record price paid for a pair of Queen Victoria's undergarments, Lyon & Turnbull's sale of works from the Forbes Collection raised the more serious question of the current state of the Victorian art market.

SINCE setting up on his own as Transporter Collectors Auctions eight years ago, Peter Card has enjoyed going by bike rather than car but the high point came on October 21 when a very rare 1869 model sold for a new high at his sale.

A GROUP of American artists have filed class action lawsuits against Christie’s and Sotheby’s complaining they have violated the 1976 California Resale Royalty Act.