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UK: THE Incorporated Society of Valuers and Auctioneers will be absorbed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors following an overwhelming vote in favour of the move by ISVA members.

The international market for Impressionist and Modern art saw further consolidation last week in London when Sotheby’s and Christie’s Part I and Part II sales turned over a combined total of £86.3m, some 45 per cent up on the £47.8m achieved at the equivalent sales last year.

UK: THE Professional Football Association was the successful bidder for L.S. Lowry’s crowd scene Going to the Match at Sotheby’s London last Wednesday, setting the record for the highest auction price for a Modern British painting at £1.75m

UK: International bidders tuned into proceedings at Canterbury Auction Galleries on October 2, 1999 in the prospect of acquiring one of the earliest ship-to-shore receivers, illustrated right, manufactured in 1908 by the founding father of commercial radio communication – Guglielmo Marconi.

UK: CHRISTIE’S have denied rumours that they plan to give notices to quit to their gallery leaseholders in Ryder and Bury Streets, St James’s, so that they can redevelop the premises.

UK: PARIS salons were well known for flatulence in conversation. After each manned flight of giant balloons from the gardens of Versailles during the late 18th and 19th centuries, young men who wished to sound like scientists would earnestly debate whether hydrogen gas or hot air allowed the better flight.

UK: A RARE catch indeed, the most important painting of its period in a British private collection, Botticelli’s Virgin Adoring the Christ Child, c.1490-1500, pictured right, has been acquired by the National Gallery of Scotland from the 10th Earl of Wemyss and March, who was about to sell it to America.

UK: AN international mix of private collectors, dealers and institutions turned out to bid for an old and celebrated collection of European glass formed by the late Dr. Otto Dettmers of Bremen when it went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London last week on November 23.

UK: PHOTOGRAPHIC proof of provenance lends enormous wings to the object concerned, and lot 1 at Phillips’ (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) sale of English and Continental furniture in London on October 12 was just such a case.

UK: IT MAY have been a mahogany wine cooler, but did its massive proportions and one-time residence in St Alban’s Cathedral suggest that it had formerly been used as a christening bath for babies rather than for beverages?

UK: CAMPAIGNERS want all dealers across the country to act now against the proposed Kent County Council Bill which could tie the trade up in red tape and discourage buyers.

UK: EXAMPLES of the laminated-birch long chair designed by Marcel Breuer for the Isokon Furniture Company in 1936 have become a fairly common sight at London sales of modern design icons but are perhaps less familiar in the provinces.

UK: THE LINK between the woven silk portrait illustrated right and the modern world of computing may not be instantly apparent, but this 6in x 4in (16 x 11cm) silk panel, albeit a curiosity rather than a key scientific document, had a successful part to play in the Weinreb Computer Collection, which was sold by Bloomsbury Book Auctions in London on October 28.

UK: BRIEF as any report dating back to September 28 must be, it is worth recording some successes at the Birmingham rooms of Fellow & Sons (10 per cent buyer’s premium).

UK: TWO from a set of five Chippendale mahogany dining chairs sold for £120,000 (plus 15 per cent premium) as part of the sale of objects from Hever Castle, Kent conducted ‘on the premises’ by Weller King on November 9.

UK: A PERMANENT exhibition space for objects from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg is to be part of the continuing development of London’s Somerset House as an arts complex.

UK: THE unknown British soldier who embroidered the crude depiction of his lonely blockhouse on the South African veld almost a century ago, could hardly have expected his work to end up on the hallowed walls of the National Army Museum in Chelsea, having provoked intense competition from international bidders at Bosley’s auction of militaria in Marlow on October 12.

UK: A heart-shaped London delft pill slab of c.1660-70, 12 x 10in (30 x 25cm), painted in blue, ochre and turquoise with the arms of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.

UK: THERE remains some serious money available for the rarest of the Royal Doulton HN series figures as was seen at this Lincolnshire sale when one of the first of the Harry Nixon series was offered.

UK: ABOUT 30 years ago a local private lady purchased this 5.2in (13cm) high Charles II flat-lidded silver tankard, pictured right, for £6 at a Cumbrian jumble sale: a generation later, having realised its potential worth, she decided to place the vessel into the hands of the Cumbrian auctioneers Penrith Farmers’ & Kidd’s (10 per cent buyer’s premium) for their sale on September 29.