2014

Auctioneer Richard Madley believes he may have set a record for the longest time ever taken to sell a single lot.

The school curriculum needs to focus more on arts and crafts if the creative industries are to have a future in the UK. So says the director of education at West Dean in West Sussex.

The new Chinese representative at John Nicholson’s auctioneers has set out a seven-point plan for how to connect properly with Chinese clients.

Martel Maides of St Peter Port, Guernsey offered a single-strand pearl necklace for sale with a £1500-2000 estimate on the assumption they were natural saltwater pearls – the highest bidder reserving the right to send them for laboratory testing prior to settling the bill.

This postcard sketch by the Chapman Brothers is one of a large number created by well-known figures in art, sport, music TV and film to raise money for Action Against Cancer and the Brain Tumor Charity Silas Pullen Fund.

Popular demand has prompted IACF to trial a two-day part-weekend antiques and collectors’ fair next month at the RAF Swinderby site.

The Roman artist Bartolomeo Pinelli (1781-1835) is best known as a prolific engraver, selling to tourists his prints portraying the everyday life and costumes of characters encountered in and around the Piazza della Rotonda.

Lyon & Turnbull are to sell the contents of Bantry House, County Cork, one of the best-known historic houses in the Republic of Ireland.

Seventeenth century Dublin trefid spoons are extremely scarce. Last year a single rat-tailed example by Andrew Gregory, 1685, sold for €9000 at Adams of Dublin.

Despite countless offers to leave France, Suzanne Belperron (1900-83) remained in German-occupied Paris throughout the Second World War – a jewellery maker and a Resistance fighter.

New York is a step closer to adopting new restrictions on ivory after the State Assembly passed the bill to bar nearly all sales of elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn.

A draft of Bob Dylan’s seminal recording Like A Rolling Stone set a new auction record for a pop song manuscript when it sold for $1.7m (£1.04m) to an unnamed collector at Sotheby’s New York on June 24.

Consigned by the debt-ridden Delaware Museum of Art, Isabella and the Pot of Basil by William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) was the top lot of Christie’s sale of Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite and British Impressionist art in London last week.

Fair organisers David and Lee Ann Lester of IFAE of Miami, Florida, and Harry Vander Hoorn, second-generation owner of the Dutch stand builders StabiloWorld and partner in Masterpiece London, have formed a new company, Next Level Global Fairs, LLC.

Sotheby’s set a new auction record for a stamp with the $7.9m (£4.85m) hammer taken for the 1856 British Guiana one-cent Magenta in New York last week.

Bonhams have declined to comment on reports in the media that the company is up for sale for a price rumoured to be several hundred million pounds.

French auctioneers Artcurial are expanding their reach by opening an office in Austria, following on from the Milan and Brussels branches established in 2012.

NAVA have announced their new Autumn Forum will take place on Thursday, September 25.

A three-day conference focused on The Period Room will take place at the Bowes Museum on September 18-20.

English cameo glass was the star of the show at Woody Auction’s second dispersal from the collection of Dr Ernest and Karin Rieger held in Wichita, Kansas.