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Dublin fine art auctioneers James Adam believe uncertainty regarding the euro has helped rather than hindered the Irish art market.

THE draft Metal Theft (Prevention) Bill before Parliament makes no distinction between those dealing in general scrap and the trade in scrap precious metal.

AUCTION Atrium, the online auction house based in Kensington Church Street, London, has announced that it has ceased trading.

SOTHEBY’S have posted $4.9bn in worldwide sales for 2011, marginally up on 2010. The United States remains the company's primary market, accounting for just over $1.9bn of sales, with the UK second at $1.5bn. Continental Europe yielded $527m, while Asia - largely Hong Kong-based sales - totalled $959m.

THE Oak Sale at Bonhams Chester is not the obvious place to find a 16th century Indo-Portuguese chair. Hiding in plain sight at the January 19 auction of predominantly British vernacular design was a rare survivor.

EVIDENCE that the trade is not taking the introduction of the beefed up Artist’s Resale Right (ARR) lightly is beginning to emerge.

AT Waterloo, Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) is supposed to have directed the battle from a position near the crossroads of the Brussels and Ohain roads.

DETAILS have emerged of a brutal and ruthlessly executed robbery which saw two armed men break into the home of an elderly art dealer in Northern Ireland on January 3.

After massive falls in the previous two years, the Antique Collectors’ Club’s Annual Furniture Index (AFI) dropped by a modest two per cent in 2011.

THE small factory at Limehouse, operating on the banks of the Thames just to the east of the Tower of London from 1745-1748, was one of the pioneers of English porcelain manufacture.

AN eyewitness account of a raid on the Nomos/CNG coin sale in New York on January 4 reveals how police locked the doors of the saleroom and took down the details of all those inside.

ANTIQUE and secondhand jewellery valued at £430,000 has been stolen during a break-in at an auction house in south Glasgow following what appears to have been a carefully planned and meticulously timed raid.

The single-owner sale of English and Dutch drinking glasses collected by A.C. Hubbard offered over 500 lots to tempt enthusiasts into the saleroom.

THIS alabaster sculpture by Barbara Hepworth (1903-75), entitled Two Rotating Forms II and dated to 1966, began the new year in style for Sworders.

THE latest UK government report on the export of works of art revealed that a modest £3.7m worth of treasures were saved for the nation in 2011 after being blocked from leaving the country last year.

SOTHEBY’S Paris have announced that they have negotiated a private treaty sale to the Louvre for an undisclosed sum of a pair of silver tureens, covers, liners and stands by the French goldsmith Robert-Joseph Auguste.

Late December is when the Paris rooms traditionally produce their ‘bilan’ or annual sales figures. For 2011, as in 2010, there remain three front runners who are way ahead of the others.

NASA are trying to play down news of a row with Apollo astronauts over the sale of artefacts from the space programme dating back to the 1960s and ‘70s.

In clock collecting, the gold standard of original condition can be a difficult one to meet. Clocks almost always needing repairs or replacement parts to keep functioning day in, day out for centuries.

Confirming the time-honoured ability of auctioneers to attract vendors in a recession, the UK’s top tier of regional salerooms enjoyed a largely positive 2011.