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THE Swiss authorities have launched a criminal investigation into scam guide firms and their associated debt recovery agencies.

Dreweatt Neate Fine Art have arranged a major private treaty sale to the National Library of Australia, on behalf of a prominent UK family, of a historically important folio of watercolours.

The emerging class of wealthy Chinese buyers continues to boost the top-end of the art and antiques market in the Far East. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that Sotheby’s set a house record in this autumn’s Hong Kong series, taking HK$850.9m (£61.7m) from seven sales.

Police in Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, are investigating a series of thefts from antiques shops and galleries in the area over the last month, which officers believe are linked.

ART donations to public collections could soon be used to partially offset income tax.

A memorial service for Barry Davies, the well-known dealer in Japanese works of art who died in September, will be held on Monday, December 12.

The Richmond Gold Cup was one of the great Georgian flat races. Four miles, eight of the finest thoroughbreds of the day, and an ancient course set in the rolling Capability Brown parklands of Aske Hall.

BY IVAN MACQUISTEN Droit de Suite, the much-feared extra levy on art sales, cannot now be introduced in the UK on January 1 next year.

BY IAN MCKAYWRITING about some of the more important items in his peerless private collection of atlases and geographies, the late Lord Wardington said of the Doria Atlas: “I just hope that it... will prove to be as good an investment in the future as I might have made in stocks and shares.”

There will be a rare chance to glimpse some of the long unseen areas of Beijing’s Forbidden City on November 28, when Henry Tzu Ng of the World Monuments Fund will deliver a lecture at the Royal Academy in conjunction with their forthcoming exhibition – China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795.

When the Troika pottery in Newlyn closed its doors in 1983 its moulds were secured for posterity, not in a local museum or the collection of a Troika devotee but in a garden shed in Northumberland.

BY ALEX CAPON NEW techniques for the scientific ‘fingerprinting’ of ceramics may soon become more practical for the trade to use.

Setting a new house record for Holloways of Banbury, this enigmatic alabaster urn shot to £170,000 (plus 15% buyer’s premium) on October 18.

THE 20th century fashion and accessories sales at Christie’s South Kensington (20/12% buyer’s premium) are not the firm’s biggest money-spinners.

Red tape continues to delay compensation payments in the Sotheby’s/Christie’s collusion case, despite assurances that they would be made by the end of September.

A French court has upheld the right of Paris auction firm Artcurial to use the name F. Tajan in their full title Artcurial Briest-Le Fur-Poulain-F. Tajan.

LAPADA have organised a free legal seminar for members in conjunction with the City law firm Withers to take place at 5.30pm on Wednesday, November 30 at the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, 1 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1.

GOLD hit a 17-year high of £268.81 per 24 carat troy ounce as ATG went to press, Michael Bloomstein of Brighton reported.

POLICE are warning antiques dealers to look out for the two men, pictured left, who they believe are professional thieves targeting antiques centres and shops.

Pictured right is a Yongzheng period (1723-1735) egg-yolk yellow ground ‘cranes’ bowl that was offered on the second day of a three-day sale conducted by Bamfords in Derby from September 13-15.