UK

A UK-based businessman has been arrested on suspicion of looting Egyptian artefacts after he consigned several items into a Christie’s antiquities sale in London.

The inaugural sale held by new London-based musical instrument auctioneers Ingles & Hayday generated a £2.26m total from 150 lots.

A first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone containing personal annotations and illustrations by author J.K. Rowling’s fetched £150,000 at a charity auction held at Sotheby’s in London last night.

A demand from the National Archives for lots to be withdrawn from auction at Tennants of Leyburn could have wider implications for the trade in historical documents.

Possibly dating from the reign of Louis XIV, this fine boulle casket and stand was among an assortment of jewellery, silver, furniture and pictures at Thomas R. Callan’s sale in Ayr, south west Scotland.

Dreweatts will be conducting the first auction of a complete RHS Chelsea garden during this year’s flower show.

Maybe I’m biased, but I find it hard to think of a more diverse, passionate, interesting and occasionally downright bonkers bunch of people than antiques dealers.

The highlight of Lyon & Turnbull’s sale of Decorative Arts was this copper and brass electrolier made in the workshops of the designer and architect William Arthur Smith Benson c.1900.

Although taught by Bernard Cuzner at the St Margaret School of Art and a contemporary of both Dorrie Nossiter and Katie Eadie, George Edward Hunt (1892-1960) is not the best-known jeweller of the Birmingham Group.

Pearls and coloured stones remain strong – but, fuelled by interest from China (and, to a lesser, extent, the Middle East), so does amber.

Some of the galleries affected by redevelopment in Cork Street, Mayfair, have been given hope that they can move back once the work is completed.

The manager of a Hampshire auction house which collapsed owing money and goods to hundreds of consignors has failed to secure new saleroom premises less than ten miles away.

Standing in the same spot where he had placed the winning £3.25m bid for an Egyptian statue of Isis six months before, London dealer Daniel Katz was again in action at Christie’s South Kensington’s latest antiquities sale.

Last week was a busy one for glass and ceramics in the London rooms with five auctions taking place over the space of 48 hours and some bullish prices for top pieces.

The original autograph draft manuscript for Gerard Manley Hopkins’ 1879 poem ‘Binsey Poplars’ has been acquired by the Bodleian Libraries.

A single pearl-drop earring worn by Charles I at his execution in 1649, a maharaja’s coat richly embroidered with pearls c.1870, and a necklace of cultured pearls given to Marilyn Monroe by Joe DiMaggio in 1954 – all part of an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum this autumn.

Fellows’ latest quarterly Vintage & Modern Wristwatch auction included a rare 1940s Rolex Oyster, the so-called ‘monobloc’ chronograph.

The Mishneh Torah was withdrawn from a recent Sotheby’s sale at the eleventh hour after vendors Michael and Judy Steinhard struck a private treaty sale with The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

One of the highlights of the latest raft of Islamic auctions in London was an unusual half-moon-shaped 10th/11th century granite temple step from Sri Lanka which had spent years in a Devon garden.

GALLERY NEWS – Jamie Rountree of Rountree Fine Art and Oliver Swann of Tryon Gallery have announced that they will merge their two companies under the new name of Rountree Tryon.