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BONHAMS withdrew 16 lots, with a combined top estimate in excess of £200,000, from last Wednesday’s Bond Street furniture sale after they had good reason to believe the consignor was connected with disgraced ex-BADA dealer John Hobbs.

RECORD prices for three European artists helped lift the latest round of Impressionist and Modern art sales in New York. With the market much more selective since the downturn two years ago and most of the competition focusing on the biggest trophy lots, the new saleroom highs for Henri Matisse, Juan Gris and Amedeo Modigliani provided further evidence of recovery at the top end.

THIS late 18th/early 19th century Native American ball-head club made a house record when it sold for £33,000 at Charles Ross auctioneers in Woburn, Bedfordshire.

IN the space of a fortnight, prices at the top end for South African art took a significant leap forward as the auction record for the Grande Dame of the market, Irma Stern (1894-1966), was broken twice, first in Cape Town and then in London.

“I LOOK upon [it] with equal amazement, as I do upon St. Paul’s Cathedral; each the work of one man, each the work of an Englishman”.

THE latest Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ (RICS) survey points to prices picking up slightly for mid-range goods at auction in the UK provinces.

MAKING £160,000 hammer at Convery Auctions last week, Nobby Stiles' 1966 World Cup winner's medal eclipsed the £140,000 made by team-mate Alan Ball's medal at Christie's South Kensington in May 2005 and set the highest price seen for a '66 medal so far at public auction.

PICTURED here is one of more than 100 polychrome Delft tiles, valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds, stolen from a leading collector in the Netherlands.

AN iPhone App has been launched to guide vistors around the galleries, auction houses and museums during Asian Art in London which runs from November 4 to 13.

AT £5.26m hammer, Sotheby’s three-day dispersal from the attics, stables and stores of the Derbyshire seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, was the ultimate in a ‘dusting down’ sale.

HAVING appeared to wash their hands of their obligation to undertake a study of the effect of the Artist’s Resale Right, the European Commission has finally agreed that they will look into the matter early in 2011.

GENERATING a 25-minute bidding battle at Halls' sale in Shrewsbury on October 20, The Earl of Oxford's Roan or Bloody shouldered Arabian by John Wootton (c.1682-1764) set a new house record when it was finally knocked down to an anonymous UK buyer for £326,000.

THE Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) have issued further important guidelines regarding the sale of antique rhinoceros horn.

IN a week when the 1968 European Cup winner’s medal awarded to George Best sold for £130,000, the appearance of more blue-chip sporting memorabilia on the auction market has been announced.

THREE people have been arrested in Germany in connection with a multi-million pound art fraud involving a number of apparently major 20th century oils sold on the international market in recent years.

AN interest in wine and a holiday to Britain 49 years ago led New Englanders Alden and Connie Lank to their first silver wine labels.

THE world auction record for a Chinese ceramic of work of art toppled during Sotheby's latest week-long Asian sales series of classical, modern and contemporary Chinese art, watches, wine and jewellery in Hong Kong.

THE spectre of a nationalised Drouot haunted delegates at the Annual Congress of French auctioneers’ union SYMEV, held at Artcurial’s Champs-Elysées premises earlier this month.

FOUND earlier this year in a house near Oxford where they were carrying out a probate valuation, auctioneers Mallams offered for sale this seminal painting Bravo! by C.R.W. Nevinson (1889-1946) on October 13.

A NEW strict liability rule under the Bribery Act exposes companies to prosecution if they do not put necessary procedures in place to police those acting on their behalf.