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THE question of authenticity remains high on the agenda in the Banksy market after a last-minute intervention by the self-styled guerrilla artist had a devastating effect on Lyon & Turnbull’s latest attempt to break into the London contemporary art market.

The volume of artist Louis Wain’s distinctive ceramic animals making a sudden appearance on the market has raised the possibility that some could be reproductions or fakes. Seven have been offered at various UK salerooms in the last month, while two suspect examples have already been pulled from a Bonhams sale.

Lyon & Turnbull are to turn the buyer’s premium system on its head by raising it for top-tier prices but cutting it for lower-priced lots in general sales.

Gloucestershire auctioneers Simon Chorley began their autumn season on September 18, selling this Louis XIV ebony, ivory and tortoiseshell cabinet for £65,000 (plus 15 per cent buyer's premium).

Christie’s have announced the exact dates and location for the Paris sale of the collection put together by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. It will be held jointly by two auction houses, Christie’s and Pierre Bergé & Associates, on February 23, 24 and 25 next year.

MEDIA interest in the Pietro Psaier controversy saw members of the national press in attendance at John Nicholson’s Fernhurst rooms on September 24 for the sale of 235 artworks.

AROUND 200 valuable pieces of jewellery, silver, porcelain and furniture were stolen after thieves broke into an Oxfordshire manor house, using sledgehammers to break through two walls.

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PRE-COLOMBIAN art valued at €5m in total was withdrawn from sale in Paris on September 12 after the last-minute intervention of the Mexican Embassy.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