2013

At Dreweatts’ first stand-alone sale of jewellery in London this version of Salvador Dalí’s ‘The Eye Of Time’ (El Ojo Del Tempo) brooch sold for £75,000.

In 1987 the BBC interviewed Daimler-Benz’s former chief engineer, Rudi Uhlenhaut, and asked the 81-year-old about the firm’s post-War return to serious motor racing in the 1954-55 period.

This week sees Sotheby’s staging their annual exhibition of work by the company’s employees, showcasing the artistic talents of over 60 members of staff.

To great publicity last November Martel Maides of Guernsey sold a collection of Fijian cannibal forks for close to £30,000. They were the property of a local collector, who had bought them privately in the North Midlands three or four decades ago – the same vendor who entered an Aboriginal parrying shield to the auctioneer’s sale last month with hopes of £3000-4000.

We can be too quick to write the obituary of the passionate old-school collector. Thankfully, they are still with us.

An extraordinary relic of the African slave trade was among the headline lots from a three-day sale held by Lockdales in Martlesham Heath near Ipswich last month.

Business is continuing to improve but the rate of recovery has slowed among London’s fine art dealers, their trade association’s latest survey reveals.

The most stunning price of London’s summer auction season came at Christie’s last week when the competition that emerged on ‘Love among the Ruins’ by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98) was one of the strongest ever seen for a Victorian picture.

Drawn from life at Nelson’s home, Merton, just weeks before the Battle of Trafalgar, this pastel portrait by the marine artist John Whichelo sold for £52,000 at Sotheby’s.

An extraordinary cache of 2794 Victorian farthings, all dated 1890, of the same type, and generally all in glorious mint state, have been consigned as lot 680 to Woolley & Wallis’s upcoming Silver and Collectors’ sale in Salisbury.

Mike Collins is to build on his success running Bermondsey Antiques Market by trialling a night antiques market during the summer.

Dealers standing at fairs across the UK will soon face a 20% rise in stall rents as HM Revenue & Customs enforce new VAT rules.

An exceptional piece of 17th century Japanese export lacquer with a provenance to match has produced the highest auction price in France this year when it was sold to the Rijksmuseum for a hammer price of €5.9m (£5.26m).

Eton College is now the new home of the world’s most expensive football programme.

Olympia organisers Clarion Events have issued a warning to exhibitors after they were targeted by another of the scam guides so often reported on these pages.

At the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers biennial dinner at the Royal Thames Yacht Club in Knightsbridge Paul Viney of Woolley & Wallis officially handed over the chairmanship of the association to Helen Carless, managing director of Lawrences Crewkerne.

New rules governing trade in the parts of endangered species will hit the antiques trade harder than first thought.

David Gonzalez, a builder and decorator in Hoffman, Minnesota, bought a small house on his own account for $10,100 and set to work on fixing it up for re-sale. Then he took down one of the walls and revealed a hidden treasure.

Even in the collecting field of the ‘heroic age’ of Polar exploration where items reflecting incredible stories of human endurance seem to come thick and fast, there are still some that really take the breath away.

UK dealers and auction houses have been alerted to the theft of six oil paintings by Evie Hone from a church in Ireland.