2013

There was a good vibe around the Asian art sales this year.

Abstinence was a ceremonial requirement prior to worshipping the ancestors, the heavens or other deities in the Qing court.

Setting a major house record at South London auctioneers Rosebery’s, this oil painting by Léon Bakst (1866-1924) drew eight interested parties at the West Norwood saleroom last week.

Work has begun on an £8m expansion at Tennants which will provide three new salerooms.

The argument was lively at this year’s ATG debate at the Summer Olympia fair, as BADA and LAPADA dealer Lennox Cato and Be Smart About Art founder Susan Mumford, disputed whether a gallery is still necessary for business in the modern marketplace.

Henri Gros, partner in the Paris auctioneers Gros & Delettrez, has been suspended for two months for accepting €200,000 in small denomination notes from a Chinese buyer after the Paul-Louis Weiller sale in April 2011.

The Museums Association is seeking urgent talks with Croydon Council to question them about a plan to sell 24 items from their 230-piece antique Chinese ceramics collection.

What must be one of the most iconic racing cars ever to come up for sale will be offered by Bonhams at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on July 12.

Bonhams have announced that they have secured potentially the most valuable lot among the works being sold from the Dr. Gustav Rau collection.

A rare linocut by Cyril Power (1874-1951) leads the sale of Modern & Contemporary prints at Bloomsbury Auctions in London on June 27.

Previously on loan to the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, this unusually large Jiaqing (1796-1820) period export porcelain punch bowl decorated with the Cholmondeley of Vale Royal coat of arms sold for £43,000 at nearby Saltney saleroom Byrne’s this week.

A large depiction of a magician commanded significant attention at Mellors & Kirk’s sale in Nottingham earlier today.

The Benson collection of early spoons was dispersed at Christie’s King Street last week. The highest selling lot was a Henry VI spoon with a Wodewose or wild man finial (one of only four known) which was secured by a UK private buyer on the phone for £70,000.

Three men who hid a £5m antiques haul taken from three country homes will be sentenced in a month’s time after the last of the gang admitted his guilt.

The Oxford Conference for auctioneers and valuers launched last autumn by Rupert Toovey and Jeremy Lamond will be repeated this year on Friday and Saturday, September 13-14, based at the Ashmolean Museum with lectures in the Taylor Institute adjacent to the museum campus.

Is this Elkington kettle the earliest provable Christopher Dresser design for electroplated silver?

The Christopher Dresser Society will be launched at Teesside University on June 20.

LAPADA have launched a new app which showcases members’ stock in the form of a quiz.

Two items of silver stolen from a Worcestershire house have been returned to the owner after a dealer recognised one of them from an alert in ATG.

A sickle-leaf carpet from the William A. Clark collection has set a new auction record for a Persian carpet after selling for $30m (£20.5m) at Sotheby’s New York.