UK

Clarion Events has welcomed the news that the Olympia exhibition site is to be redeveloped.

Among the most coveted of all Martinware is the ‘Wally’ bird. These quirky and grotesque jars (really caricatures of people in Victorian London), were produced from the early 1880s onwards and were named after their maker Robert Wallace Martin, one of four brothers who ran the famous British pottery.

The final 2017 edition of the Cotswolds Decorative Antiques & Art Fair takes place from October 27-29 in Westonbirt School, Gloucestershire.

There is nothing so stylish in the world of vintage frocks as a 1930s wedding dress – all Hollywood-style glamour with long silky satin gowns.

The estate of a prominent Jewish art collector has failed to secure the return of a rare Meissen figure that was the subject of a recent export stop.

Last week’s first report on the fine travel library of John and Suzanne Bonham at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) focused on the Middle East, India, Central Asia and the Far East. This second selection begins with an African discovery and ends at the South Pole.

The currently vibrant market for Oceanic art was made plain to staff at John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium) of Fernhurst in February this year when a Maori putorino or bugle flute, estimated at £50-100, sold to French dealer for £140,000. Surely, similar good fortune would not be repeated any time soon?

More than 30 dealers will stand at the next Galloway Antiques Fair at Cowdray House in West Sussex from October 20-22.

A single-owner collection focusing on the polar regions was a notable feature of the travel section of the October 4 sale held by Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium). It included, at a 10-times estimate £3000, the posthumously published Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph Rene Bellot.

The designated tribal art department at Woolley & Wallis (22% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury is now in its third year – and increasingly picking up consignments and regular buyers from well beyond its immediate hinterlands.

The European decorative arts that preceded the tribal session at John Nicholson’s (24% buyer's premium) on October 10 had included a handful of notable bids, not least the £14,500 (estimate £300-500) tendered by an Italian buyer for a small early 20th century Louis Vuitton leather box measuring just 11in (27cm) across.

Pictures, prints and taxidermic displays accounted for the larger part of the Ornithology Sale held by Keys (17.5% buyer’s premium) on September 22, but it also offered some 175 book lots, many of them multiples.

LAPADA has begun the search for a new chief executive after the resignation of Rebecca Davies, prioritising a candidate’s ability to represent the trade’s interests to government.

The Winchester saleroom Andrew Smith & Son (15% buyer’s premium) unearthed eight works by two of Singapore’s most celebrated 20th century artists for sale on September 13.

Sold for £1100 by Chiswick Auctions (23% buyer’s premium) on September 27 was a copy of the posthumously published, 1633 first of Henry Briggs’ Trigonometria britannica….

Organisers of south London events select historic venues for ever-expanding operation...

An example of the extremely rare, “surreptitious” edition of John Flamsteed’s Historia Coelestis… – a star atlas that is one of the great rarities in its field – made a record £43,000 at Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on September 27.

A double-sided drawing by Alberto Giacometti of his classic elongated head and figure designs has been sold at auction in Cambridge for £130,000.

It's all change for Salvo 2018. Organiser Thornton Kay is taking a sabbatical from running the annual architectural salvage fair next year.