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UK: ONE OR TWO lots that figured among the higher prices in this Midlands sale would seem to have been sold primarily as collections of travel or botanical plates, and these I have bypassed in favour of the following selection of books.

FRANCE: TOULOUSE-Lautrec’s famous 1893 poster of Jane Avril (printed by Chaix), in a five-coloured lithograph version with the rare text addition Jardin de Paris beneath the dancer’s name, spearheaded the Le Mouel poster sale of May 18 with Fr415,000 (£38,400).

Furniture in country house is eclipsed by piece found in a drawer UK: PAPERWEIGHTS have not hit any sort of headlines in years and anyone outside the coterie of (mostly American) collectors may have assumed they had been relegated to the status of murder weapons in Thirties whodunits – but not so. One became the totally unexpected star of the contents of The Thorne, a country house at Bethsersden which were removed to the salerooms at Canterbury.

US: REVERED as the only Irish artist to have been fully involved in the developments of French avant garde painting during the early years of Modernism, Roderic O’Conor (1860-1940) has inspired a succession of impressive six-figure prices over the last couple of years, culminating in the £320,000 bid by a Dublin collector for a c.1903 Post-Impressionist oil, Nature Mort: Faience, at Sotheby’s June 21 sale of Modern British & Irish Art in London.

PRIME Minister Tony Blair has taken the unusual step of announcing that the UK government will vote against droit de suite, the artists resale levy, when the European Union puts it to the final vote.

A number of dealers have contacted the Antiques Trade Gazette concerning a couple passing false cheques in antique shops across Dorset, Devon, Oxfordshire and Berkshire.

UK: A RARE example of Irish printing, this work by Hugh MacCaghwell, styled Aodh mac aingil, translates as A Mirror of the Sacrament of Penance and was printed at the Irish Franciscan College of St. Anthony of Padua at Louvain in 1618.

UK: ILLUSTRATED here are two items used to decorate the covers of the sale catalogue issued for by Dominic Winter for their May 17 Sports sale.

FRANCE: THESE intricately patterned boxes in straw marquetry were offered by the Rouen dealers Hervieux & Motard for between £500-£1500 each at the recent Dijon Salon des Antiquaires (May 18-27).

SWITZERLAND: THE sale of Classical Greek coins held at Leu, Zurich (15 per cent buyer’s premium) on May 16 was billed as the finest at least since WWII. This was hardly modest, but it certainly was not far from the truth. The sale coins were culled from the best sales of exactly the last four decades. Not only this but the coins were invariably among the finest specimens available during this time and many of them had provenances going back a lot further.

FRANCE: DIJON’S trio of auction firms like to cash in on the presence of antiques collectors at the Dijon fair (see Fairs Sales Analysis, "Dijon cuts the mustard") and one of the highlights at the Vregille-Bizoüard sale on May 20 was this pair of early 18th century Italian engraved rococo mirrors, 3ft 11in (1.20m) tall, that tripled estimate on Fr142,000 (£13,100).

twrio, edited by Carol and Robert Pugh, published by Towy Publishing, PO Box 24, Carmarthen SA31 lYS. ISBN 952579022, £7.99 + £1 p&p (01267 236569).

UK: TWO LOTS in this Norfolk sale stood head and shoulders above all others, at least in financial terms. One was a group of original illustrations by Charles Kerr for a Rider Haggard adventure story that made £3200 (see caption story below); the other a copy of John Arrowsmith’s London Atlas in modern half calf that reached £6600 (Heald).

A Passion for Pottery... Further Selections from the Henry H. Weldon Collection by Peter Williams and Pat Halfpenny, published by Sotheby’s Publications ISBN 0962258865, £225, hb in slipcase (limited edition of 1500 copies).

UK: BOUND in red morocco gilt, this limited edition copy of Imperial Cricket, edited by P.F. [Plum] Warner and published in 1912, was sold by Rupert Toovey on May 23 for £360.

A Pottery by the Lagan: Irish Creamware from the Downshire Pottery, Belfast 1787-c.1806 by Peter Francis, published by the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast. ISBN 0853896941, £10stg, sb.

Beadwork by Pamela Clabburn, published by Shire Publications. ISBN 0747804818, £4.50.

UK: THE trial of Dennis Yates, the Nottingham-based radio specialist accused of blackmail and receiving stolen goods after an Enigma code machine was stolen from Bletchley Park Museum, may be delayed by a defence plea to move the venue.

SWEDEN: AN unrestored canvas by the American painter Julius Leblanc Stewart (1855-1919) of two fashionably dressed ladies meeting on the deck of a yacht on the Côte d’Azur inspired predictably intense levels of demand when it came under the hammer at the Stockholm rooms of Stockholms Auctionsverk (17.5 per cent buyer’s premium) on May 22.

UK: With a sale total of £30,256 for 442 lots of ‘breweriana’, Alan Blakeman of BBR Auctions chalked up yet another niche market success on May 13.