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GOOD stock furniture was the strength of this 289-lot, £130,000 Halls Shropshire sale on March 9 where the top price was taken by a c.1775 two-tier mahogany dumbwaiter.

UK: THE Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is celebrating a £425,000 Lottery windfall that has helped it acquire a stunning coin collection.

Exhibitions of desirable items from exotic locations at affordable prices has become the hallmark of the Gordon Reece Gallery, 16 Clifford Street, London W1 and this applies to the current exhibition of Antique Chinese Classical Furniture which continues until May 12.

UK: This Urbino majolica istoriato dish, depicting the cutting of Samson’s hair and attributed to Francesco Xanto Avelli di Rovigo, was discovered in a box of effects following a clearance at a Fenland farmhouse and entered for sale at Golding Young & Co. of Grantham on April 11.

Portable Writing Desks by David Harris

F&M notwithstanding, the latest West Country Sporting sale to be held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt, the Somerset saleroom on March 30 saw its best ever attendance.

Furniture from British India and Ceylon: A Catalogue of the Collections in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum, by Amin Jaffer

British Campaign Furniture: Elegance Under Canvas 1740-1914, by Nicholas A. Brawer

The second foray to Mayfair from their custom-built rooms near Bath fell short of an unqualified success for Gardiner Houlgate (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) but the March 18 specialist musical instruments sale at the Westbury Hotel, where some 380 lots took about £178,000, attracted enough top-level interest to put it on the map as a bi-annual event with a third planned for November.

With Sunderland greengrocers being prosecuted for selling bananas in pounds and ounces rather than grammes, the British Trading Standards Association is naturally keen to be rid of its vast stocks of Imperial weights.

UK: Some fishermen claim that pike have an appetite for human flesh – the elderly members of a crown green bowling club in Warrington say this stuffed and mounted 201b monster has been responsible for several fatalities among their anoraked colleagues in recent years.

UK: A key feature of the Bloomsbury Book Auctions sale of April 5 was a private collection of the works of A.A. Milne.

UK: Mouseman – the name resounds beyond the world of arts and crafts furniture.

UK: One of this year’s most stunning finds, a group of four rare Sèvres Etruscan red ground dessert plates from the Prince Napoleon Service, 1854-6, offered at Mellors and Kirk, Nottingham, on April 5.

UK: Sworders, Stansted: A mammoth 1200 lots made up the March dispersal by the Essex auctioneers and there were some real quality pieces among them, both in the ceramics and the furniture.

UK: MARCH was a busy month in London and successful with it. On the 15th, Spink (15 per cent buyer’s premium) sold the definitive collection of Tudor silver coins formed over several decades by Roger Shuttlewood.

ORIENTAL rug expert Simon Crosby had launched a global appeal after his cleaning woman made off with part of his collection.

UK: One of the least prepossessing lots, but obviously rare and among the more sought after of the day’s offerings, was a small handbill recording the plague tally and burial record for the Cambridge colleges from Christmas Day 1666 to New Year’s Day 1667.

UK: ARTS Minister Alan Howarth has become increasingly active in placing temporary bans on the export of works of art

Few businesses can boast the sort of charitable contributions of Tomlinson Antiques, the furniture wholesaler of Tockwith, North Yorkshire.