London

London coin and stamp specialists Spink have been awarded an additional Royal Warrant for their services in philately.

With perfect timing in advance of the forthcoming biopic starring Renee Zellweger as Beatrix Potter, the lecture at this year’s AGM of the British Antique Furniture Restorer’s Association was entitled Beatrix Potter – A Pioneer in Regional Furniture Discovery.

Places are still available for this October on the MA course in Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors, based at the Wallace Collection.

HOARDINGS will shortly go up at London’s largest antiques market as Southwark Council announced that construction work for redeveloping Bermondsey market will begin before the end of the year.

At first glance there’s nothing very exciting at all about this Prattware pot lid.

Personnel changes are afoot in the silver departments of two of London’s major auction houses.

THE Saturday Portobello antiques market will not be disrupted by water board works as feared.

To collectors of the so-called castle-top card cases, subject matter is everything. Pictured here is a great rarity.

Medieval French silver is not a plentiful commodity. Much of it did not escape the great post-Revolutionary meltdown, but one piece that got away was the late Gothic reliquary casket that featured in Sotheby’s works of art auction in London on June 8.

RICS agree to credit new courseKINGSTON University have announced plans to introduce an MA in Arts Market Appraisal in September.

September will see the end of an era and a Kensington Church Street landmark when John Jesse, the pioneering decorative arts dealer, shuts up shop following the expiration of his lease.

DOUBTLESS unique, but in its way typical of the sort of success enjoyed at Robert Finan’s sale, was this Russian 18th century emerald, ruby and diamond cross, right, mounted in silver and gold.

Few will be unaware that 2005 is the bicentenary of Nelson’s death at the Battle of Trafalgar, given the number of celebrations and exhibitions commemorating the event.

Never was an event more aptly named than Brian and Anna Haughton’s International Ceramics Fair and Seminar, the veteran ceramics fest which celebrated its 24th staging from June 16-19.

A student has discovered a five-volume inventory of the possessions of Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, while cataloguing in the National Archives at Kew.

The July sales of Asian art will be notable for bringing two newly discovered pieces to the market, one in London and the other in Salisbury.

London turned up the heat in the market for Contemporary art when both Sotheby’s and Christie’s achieved outstanding results at their June evening sales.

IT was a family occasion on Friday June 9 at Bonhams when chairman Robert Brooks invited his father Bill to unveil a plaque for the lecture theatre in their Bond Street HQ in front of a small gathering of family members and senior staff from the auction house.

YOU wait forever then two come along at once. The sentiment so often expressed about London buses could equally well apply to rare early 18th century Continental porcelain teapots.

THE critically acclaimed Modern British loan exhibition, which has in recent years become the trademark of the Spring Olympia fair in London, has been abandoned and will be replaced by a sleeker, more contemporary show.