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UK: ALMOST all of the 22,000 heritage chattels exempted from tax since 1976 will not qualify again under the new Government rules when they come up for reassessment, Sotheby’s believe.

UK: THIS rather battered French chair that the family dog used to curl up in had buyers leaping off their seats at Christie’s sale on June 23 when it more than doubled hopes, selling at £350,000.

UK: GROWING concern has led to calls for action among dealers in Kent faced with a new law which would make it a criminal offence not to register and keep detailed records when buying and selling secondhand goods in the county.

UK: THE FINAL lot offered by Cumbrian auctioneers Penrith Farmers’ & Kidd on June 30 was this scarce piece of English oak vernacular furniture – a 17th century enclosed chest, 3ft 71/2in (1.1m) wide, with moulded panel doors which open to reveal four plain long drawers.

UK: LIVING up to its billing as one of the sales of the century The Rothschild Collection netted a hammer total of £52 million at Christie’s in London last week, the highest ever realised for a single-owner collection in Europe.

UK: THE Government’s policy of forcing the private owners of national treasures to grant more public access to them could soon face a legal challenge.

AMSTERDAM: MAKERS of Jewish ritual metalwork tended to be a relatively conservative breed – slow to respond to wider artistic cross-currents – but illustrated above are a pair of English silver Torah finials or Rimmonim, 161/2in (42cm) high, which demonstrate there are exceptions to the rule.

UK: June saw London re-affirm its position as one of the world’s two premier venues for selling top quality Impressionist and Modern art with record-breaking sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

UK: THERE was good news and bad news from the Treasury last week on the subject of art import VAT.

UK: DISCOVERED in an English collection, this French, gilt and carved fauteuil sold to a private buyer at Christie’s in London on June 23 for £350,000 (plus premium).

UK: STOW-ON-THE-WOLD has become the testing ground for the symbol to represent antiques on road signs.

US: A DEFINITIVE piece of social history, designed at the peak of the ’60s, the Rudi Gernreich topless bathing suit was considered the ultimate symbol of permissiveness and provoked a rash of moral outrage.

EU: THE PROSPECT of droit de suite spreading throughout the European Union receded last week when the Internal Market Council found that resistance to the principle of artists’ resale rights had grown and the measure was shelved.

FRANCE: AFTER YEARS of apparent indifference, the French Government appears to be preparing for a last-minute stand against art import VAT.

THE race for auction supremacy on the Internet took yet another turn last week when Sotheby’s announced a long term alliance with the best known name in e-commerce, amazon.com.

UK: TONY BANKS MP and former ministers Kenneth Baker and Peter Brooke were among those registering their interests at a sale of political commemoratives held by Special Auction Services on June 13 at the Courtyard Hotel, Padworth.

UK: ONE OF THE curious features of the English class system was the availability of similar sporting pastimes to all men by their birthright. Royalty played real tennis, for instance, while impecunious prisoners, it seems, made do with rackets.

UK: PICTURED here is one of the best examples of English cameo glass to go under the hammer for many years.

UK: ONE of the bargains of the year must be the British Library’s purchase of the Letters of the Earl of Essex to Elizabeth I, which sold at Phillips on June 11 for a low-estimate £150,000 plus premium.

UK: A DEALER’S £25 purchase at an antiques fair is likely to bring him a substantial windfall after being identified as a rare copper etching plate by Lucas van Leyden, the 16th century Old Master.