London

Thomas Del Mar (24% buyer’s premium) sold the first instalment of de-accessioned arms and armour from the John Woodman Higgins Museum in Massachusetts back in 2013 and a second in 2014.

The art market is “neither frothy nor depressed”, according to Sotheby’s chief executive Tad Smith.

Leading a 75-lot Brontë collection sold by Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 10* was a set of two of the novels written by the sisters in the hugely productive years of 1846-47.

Design will meet art and antiques at a new street event timed to coincide with The London Design Festival this September. The art and antiques dealers of Church Street in London’s Lisson Grove have decided it is an ideal moment to launch their first-ever street party on September 24.

Fuchsia Voremberg works in the travel department at rare books and manuscripts specialist Maggs Bros in London

For many years auctioneers have been itching to move the finest arms and armour from the province of the specialist collector and establish them with a wider audience as works of art in their own right.

More 19th century art was offered in London when over 120 lots of European and Orientalist pictures went under the hammer at Christie’s.

Sporting guns are a little different from other areas of the arms and armour market in that many that are well over 100 years old are still in use today.

Works by the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers continued to outperform the rest of the Victorian art market during the latest round of sales in London.

“With the exception of Dürer’s Apocalypse, the most influential woodcut programme from Germany was that of the Cologne Bible of 1478-79.”

Bid to £5000 at Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 14 was a 1593 first of Thomas Fale’s 'Horolographia. The Art of Dialling'.

Christie’s is weighing up options for the sale of the lease of its Old Brompton Road premises after it held its last sale before closing the popular South Kensington auction rooms.

Nic McElhatton, former chairman of Christie’s South Kensington, is leaving to set up his own business that will see him move between the worlds of auctions and private sales.

Roseberys has made a swoop for senior Christie’s South Kensington former heads as the south-east London auction house signals its mid-market ambitions.