UK

Since the start of the Chinese boom at UK auctions many, if not most, estimates have been little more than here-to-sell signals. Settling on a figure with which vendors are happy with, and then leaving it to the worldwide market on the net, is now common practice.

The busy market town of Beccles on the River Waveney at the edge of the Broads National Park in Suffolk started an antiques street market in the closed-off town centre nine years ago, in early May.

Antiques fair organiser IACF is offering a free pitch at one of its fairs to newcomers in return for agreeing to take part in filming a day in the life of the winner.

The first of Arthur Swallow Fairs’ Decorative Home and Salvage Shows this year kicks off on Friday, May 11, and runs to Sunday, May 13, at Ripley Castle near Harrogate.

Auctioneers have told ATG the preparations they are making for sweeping new rules that will affect how they store and use personal data, due to be implemented in the EU on May 25.

Delayed by snow for a week, the Spring Sale at Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) on March 27 opened with a local collection of Republic-era (1912-49) porcelain.

The theft of a piece of pottery from an antiques centre in Hampshire has been met with responses from other shop and centre owners reporting similar occurrences.

An ideal marriage of skills, rather than a clash of cultures, put a pair of c.1790-1800 Chinese export vases into the limelight at Hannam’s (20% buyer’s premium) sale at Selborne.

Petworth Park Antiques & Fine Art Fair is bigger than ever this year as it returns for its fourth staging.

Lady McAlpine says she is now more determined than ever to make the Décor- Architectural architectural salvage event a success after the death of her husband, Sir William, on March 4.

Multi-estimate sums proved the norm among the star lots during London’s Islamic Week auction series.

One of the smallest but most eye-catching lots at the Oriental sale at Bonhams Edinburgh (25% buyer’s premium) was two 4¼in (11cm) high Manchu officials’ bronze seals.

First such pocket atlas published in England leads a look at highly diverse auction selection

Allan Bellamy of Gazelles in Lyndhurst has been a dealer in Art Deco since 1982 and is a regular exhibitor at Deco fairs around the UK.