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VINTAGE vehicles are generally the province of specialist auctions, but Tennants (15/10% buyer's premium) finished their July 22-23 sale with a number of such offerings, in particular this 1910 Star 15mph tourer, right.

NEWS has come in of the theft of a New Zealand ‘Waitangi’ crown. This one should prove to be particularly easy to identify because it is the rare proof – not the ‘ordinary’ issue. 

RIGHT: Indoor Athlete, a signed “first stone” lithograph of 1921 by American artist George Bellows, which made $13,000 (£7065) in a May 21-23 sale held by Northeast Auctions of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

FOLLOWING the success of last year’s inaugural reunion of former Phillips employees there will be a similar Phillips Reunited gathering next month on Tuesday September 14 at 6.30pm.

THE London coin auction is indeed evolving. We have the announcement by Stephen Fenton of the birth of St James’s Auctions. Their first sale is scheduled for Wednesday October 13 at the De Vere Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street. It seems that this promises to be a very prestigious sale.

AN auction first for specialist Gordon Patrick, the vastly experienced specialist at Clarke Gammon Wellers (15% buyer's premium), was the sleeper and undisputed highlight of the Surrey sale on July 27 – a 2ft (61cm) wide kingwood, rosewood and satinwood inlaid envelope card table entered with a £200-300 estimate.

A HEALTHY take-up for the 170 lots entered without reserve from a period farmhouse in Shropshire provided the backbone of Humberts' (10% buyer's premium) 602-lot Gloucestershire outing on June 29, but it was an early 18th century upholstered walnut wingback armchair consigned from a different private source that proved the star turn.

ALTHOUGH paintings provided the highest prices for Christie’s New York's (19.5% buyer’s premium) Maritime sale on July 29, the 310-lot sale’s smaller miscellany of maritime objects also drew some serious competition for certain objects.

The Parrot Pen-man, an ink and watercolour drawing by Quentin Blake that sold for £1200, was among 40 lots offered at Sotheby’s on July 8 on behalf of the Arvon Foundation, a literary charity that provides residential creative writing courses.

I HAVE often illustrated plates from the works of Maria Sibylla Merian, but never before a portrait of that remarkable lady herself.

EIGHT market-fresh female bronzes by Aristide Maillol, ranging in height from 8-12in (20-30cm) and designed between 1896 and 1905, surfaced in the Binoche (20% buyer’s premium) saleroom on July 2.

THE June 11 Aguttes (20.33% buyer’s premium) sale was dominated by late 19th century pictures, including this 1891 Venetian Conversation, seen right, 2ft 5in x 3ft 4in (73 x 1.01m), by American artist Julius Leblanc Stewart (1855-1919), who often painted Venetian scenes – Kaiser Wilhelm II acquired his Sirocco Effects in 1895. The work here claimed a handsome €85,000 (£56,665).

FIVE previously unknown photographic prints by Edgar Degas totalled €380,000 (£253,335) at Beaussant-Lefèvre (20.93/11.96% buyer’s premium) on July 2. All featured group portraits taken at the Paris home of Degas’s friend, the painter Henri Lerolle (1848-1929), and were consigned by Lerolle’s descendants.

One of the most mysterious objects in Bonhams’ Made in Scotland sale from August 18-20, was a fascinating 18th century anamorphic painting – one of a whole class of pictures that required cylindrical mirrors to view the true image.

THE latest figures published by Customs and Excise show a large decline in fine art imports to the UK for 2003.

ADMIRAL Robert FitzRoy (1805-1865) has several claims to fame. He was companion to Darwin on the Beagle, the first Head of Meteorology at the Board of Trade (the Met Office) and, using the newly invented electric telegraph, one of the first to attempt a scientific weather forecast. His first daily weather forecasts were published in The Times in 1860, thus introducing the British public to a new pastime – complaining that the forecasters got it wrong.

CINOA, the international confederation of associations of art and antiques dealers, is to sponsor an annual prize to celebrate major contributions to scholarship and the arts.

OCTOBER 21, 2005 will see the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar and many celebrations marking the most decisive naval victory in modern history are planned. However, it will not be until January 9, 2006 that we mark 200 years since the funeral of its most famous protagonist.

IN The Sunday Telegraph of July 25, Sarah Jane Checkland offered that old chestnut “what paintings sell”. Much of the analysis was predictable – “paintings of women and children outstrip those of men and the younger and more attractive the better” and “prospects are grim for dead animals”. However, a few results of her survey were more intriguing.

PICTURED here are two pieces of Liberty & Co metalwork sold by Fieldings (12.5% buyers premium) of Hagley on July 17. The 8in (20cm) high pewter timepiece, top right, with a central copper and enamel dial with two enamel cabochons to the base, is a recorded design by Archibald Knox. The case, still with original patina, is fitted with a Lenzkirch brass bodied movement (the original key fitted to the door) and the base stamped 0370 Tudric.