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THANKS to a clever bit of detective work by one of its curators, the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle has been able to reunite a porcelain cup and saucer that have separated for over 200 years.

MASSACHUSETTS has become the 14th state to ban the sale of novelty cigarette lighters.

A COLLECTION of 85 bosuns’ calls was among items stolen from a home in Milan in early August. Most of the calls were British, but there were also examples from the USA, Italy, China and India.

WITH the new auction season getting underway, the London houses have been rushing to announce their star lots as the treasures from aristocratic collections continue to emerge in the saleroom.

AUCTIONEERS Bonhams and Irish saleroom Adam’s have decided to end their 12-year arrangement of holding joint sales in Dublin.

THE October 8 toy sale at Nagel in Stuttgart will include this Märklin gauge-1 model of the Stuttgart train station.

An independent report has confirmed that antiques are environmentally friendly with a piece of antique furniture likely to have a carbon footprint 16 times lower than that of a newly manufactured item.

THIS 8½in (21cm) English porcelain jug painted with a cavalryman on horseback probably dates from c.1817 when, following rioting in the spring, magistrates in Manchester decided to form the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry.

DEALERS Down Under have successfully fought off the recommendations of a government report that threatened to disrupt the status quo in the Australian art market.

A COLLECTION of Augustus John drawings, consigned by the family of Dame Elizabeth Taylor, will be sold by a West London auction house on September 28.

LAST week's BBC Two programme, Dragons' Den saw two of the investors stake £100,000 in return for a 40 per cent share of the online valuation business ValueMyStuffNow.com.

TECHNOLOGY is increasingly important in the art market but a pair of oils by the Anglo-Australian artist William Blamire Young (1862-1935), is believed to be the first significant work identified and consigned to auction through Christie’s iPhone application.

THIEVES have stolen a safe containing £25,000 worth of silver from a church in Woodmangreen, just north of Midhurst, Sussex.

THE five City of London livery companies with particular connections with wood (Carpenters, Furniture-Makers, Joiners, Turners and Upholders) are currently raising funds for the Arboretum Trust with a charity auction titled Branching Out.

CHISWICK Auctions are set to sell one of the most important early paintings by the German Expressionist Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966) to have come to market in recent years.

A UNIQUE archive of original Enid Blyton material is being offered for sale by her elder daughter's estate at Ilkley auctioneers Hartley's on September 15.

ATG readers spend £1.1bn a year on art and antiques, £800m of it at auction.

IT looks like a flying saucer, and to those viewing it on the monastery wall in Verona where it had hung since the Middle Ages, it can have had hardly less of an impact.

ATG has learnt that the government is seriously considering withdrawing export licences for much of the old rhinoceros horn sold in the UK.

MOST antiques that include the “parts and derivatives” of endangered species enjoy an exemption from CITES controls known as the “worked item” derogation.