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Posters advertising the first-ever public screening of a film, which took place in Paris in 1895, have hardly ever emerged outside France. While one is known in an American collection, the appearance of another at Sotheby’s latest online film posters auction understandably caused some excitement.

West Sussex auction house Bellmans has reshuffled its top team following the departure of managing director Jonathan Pratt, who left to join Dreweatts last month.

Considering that W Britain began making his revolutionary hollowcast toy soldiers only in 1893, a set dating from just three years later certainly deserves the tag ‘early’.

Two lots offering heraldic manuscripts – one of them being of particular regional interest – produced the highest bids in a mixed sale of collectables and militaria held in Shrewsbury.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

A round-up of art and antiques news from the previous seven days, including the delay in the unveiling of the world's most expensively-acquired painting.

Known familiarly as the ‘Audley End Lydgate’, the mid-15th century vellum manuscript shown below is ‘The Fall of Princes’, a Middle English version by the poet John Lydgate of Laurent de Premierfait’s French translation of Boccaccio’s De Casibus virorum illustrium.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Christie’s executive Dirk Boll told delegates at the Art Business Conference that the decorative arts could be coming back into fashion.

The UK government will ensure that ivory regulations are balanced and with “appropriate exemptions”, the new minister for arts, heritage and tourism told the Art Business Conference last week.

It’s fair to say the work of Victorian animal painter Sidney Cooper (1803-1902) is not flavour of the month.

Our round-up of British and Irish book sales coming up from September 11-21, 2018.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

An unpublished letter written by Nelson Mandela from his prison cell on Robben Island is to be offered at Bonhams’ South African sale in New Bond Street on September 14.

British modernist Kenneth Lauder (1916-2004) used to entreat his opticians to create spectacles that would allow him to see the world upside down. They refused, but he remained determined to view life in a different way.

The art and antiques trade were warned to be ready for the new money-laundering regulation coming into force next year.

“Isn’t it possible that the Irish could be just as brilliant in the visual arts as they have been in music and literature?”

Racing round the banking at Brooklands in Surrey, Sir Tim Birkin is shown to dramatic effect in this oil painting by Dion Pears, below.

Chicago auction house Potter & Potter (20% buyer’s premium) is conjuring up quite a reputation for its magic memorabilia sales.

In an increasingly complex marketplace, how should auctioneers and dealers charge for their services?