2014

The Company of Arts Scholars has been officially recognised as the 110th Livery Company of the City of London with the presentation of the Letters Patent by the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House.

The first instalment of a single-owner collection of early leather vessels was dispersed in Christie’s South Kensington’s vernacular and country-style furnishing ‘Masters and Makers’ sale.

This 4500-year-old Egyptian painted limestone statue topped last week’s summer series of Old Masters and works of art sales in London.

Maori boat-shaped feather boxes – or ‘waka huia’ – are infrequent visitors to UK salerooms so it was unusual to see two examples sold in close proximity this summer.

Auction houses everywhere need to change the way they prepare for sales in order to meet increasing demands for detailed condition reports, say Australian auctioneers Mossgreen.

Book dealers have been urged to be on the lookout after a second edition of the King James Bible from 1614 was stolen from a Berkshire church.

Here is a calendar with direct links to major upcoming art and antiques sales in London.

The big question at David Lay’s auctioneers in Penzance next week: Are these bonds worth a few hundred pounds or up to £3.6m each?

Sotheby’s have secured the single-owner collection of Rachel Lambert Mellon, valued at more than $100m, for sale later this year in New York.

The total from last week’s Contemporary art auctions in London may have been a far cry from the record New York series in May where $1.57bn (£975m) of art changed hands, but there was still plenty of action as the market continued on its current buoyant course.

The National Association of Valuers and Auctioneers (NAVA) are calling for entries for the 2014 NAVA Auctioneer of the Year competition, which will take place on September 24 at the Stratford Manor Hotel, Warwickshire.

Bedfordshire-based dealer James Gooch of Doe and Hope has been crowned the second Antiques Young Gun of the Year.

An Arts & Crafts dining room suite made by the prominent Manchester designer Edgar Wood has sold for £42,000 at Gardiner Houlgate of Corsham near Bath.

Discovered at a regional valuation day held in Shropshire by Hansons of Etwall, this Tiffany and Co. silver and mixed-media tea caddy had been a wedding gift and had remained in the family of the vendor since the 1920s.

The story goes that Steiff black mohair bears were produced as mourning bears after the Titanic disaster in April 1912.

A strong selection of Tudric (pewter) and Cymric (silver) creations by Archibald Knox for Liberty & Co was the focus of keen bidding at Bonhams’ decorative arts from 1860 sale in New Bond Street.

Wilsons Auctions of Mallusk and Portadown in Northern Ireland have sold off more than 1000 pieces of sci-fi memorabilia seized by police from a woman who stole £2.3m from her employers.

Gibraltar expects to become a new European Union tax haven for the trade in art by scrapping import and export duties on works from July 1.

Masterpiece London opened last week at The Royal Hospital Chelsea to a buzzing crowd of 7000 on preview day. Now in its fifth edition and a much-anticipated event in the London summer season, this was the highest visitor number to date.

One of Claude Monet’s paintings from his celebrated Water Lilies series led a slightly mixed round of Impressionist & Modern art auctions in London last week.