London

The next staging of the venerable Art & Antiques Fair Olympia will run longer to incorporate two weekends.

Two recently restituted panels by Sienese artist Giovanni di Paolo (c.1399-1482) lifted the latest series of Old Master auctions in London.

An autograph painting by German artist Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-79) was one of the stand-out sales during London Art Week (LAW).

Edward Baldwin, fourth generation and the last of the Baldwin clan to work for coin and medal dealership AH Baldwin & Sons has retired from the firm.

A Post-Impressionist painting of a horse-drawn hansom cab by Robert Bevan (1865-1925) was one of the headline lots at the Modern British art sales in London.

Watercolour collection sold at auction represents a ‘who’s who’ of the city in the 1830s

Though the splendid but incomplete copy of Jakob Christoph Trew’s 'Hortus nitidissims… floribus' previewed in ATG No 2018 got close to the high estimate in selling at £85,000 as part of the opening, natural history section of a recent London sale, a number of other top lots failed to find buyers.

The British Art Fair (BAF) is to return to its previous dates in late September.

London’s Russian week of auctions put in a consistent performance last week with the sales at four salerooms generating a combined £37.5m with fees. This compared to £39.2m for the equivalent series last year and the £35.8m raised at the June series.

A spate of early to mid-20th century portraits of society figures and important personalities generated stiff competition at UK sales in London and the regions.

A print fair is being launched within next year’s Firsts London rare book fair.

Containing numerous diagrams, a manuscript manual on 18th century shipbuilding techniques and practices sold for £3600 in a recent sale.

“Try a glass of Old Bushmills whiskey, your majesty, it is the whiskey all connoisseurs drink”. Not only that, but it seems this royally promoted tipple was “… recommended by Doctors in cases of Gout and Rheumatism as the most helpful drink”.

Losses narrowed for stamps, coins and medals business Stanley Gibbons in the six months to September 30.

Personal devotional prayer books, known as a Book of Hours, were popular among the wealthy and powerful in late medieval Europe. Illuminated with miniature paintings depicting the life of Christ, the Virgin Mary and saints, they were sometimes personalised for the patrons who commissioned them.

Two November sales underlined the current strength of the field of British studio pottery.

Specialist Philip Smith, head of the 20th Century & Modern British Art departments at the London outlet of Edinburgh auction house Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium), believes studio ceramics should be classed as art.