2014

The quarterly auction of silver and plated wares held by Fellows in the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter on September 22 included a family collection of eight apostle spoons formed several generations ago.

ALL 49 lots from the Murray Frum collection of Oceanic art found a buyer on September 16 at Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Paris. The hammer total was €6.24m (£5.2m).

Beyond Limits is Sotheby’s annual outdoor exhibition of monumental sculpture in the historic gardens of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire.

Lyon & Turnbull have been forced to postpone the sale of the contents of Bantry House, County Cork because of delays in obtaining a licence from the Property Services Regulatory Authority (PSRA) to hold the sale on the premises. The sale was scheduled to take place on October 21.

The US staged a raft of dedicated Asian auctions in New York salerooms and beyond last week. Top lot as ATG went to press was this 2ft 10½in (88cm) high fencai vase from the Qianlong period with a six-character turquoise Qianlong mark to the base when it sold for $22m (£14.2m) hammer at Skinner (23/20/12% buyer’s premium) in Boston on September 17.

Collector Robin Pinchbeck had never bought a clock before, but when he set his sights on the George I walnut-cased astronomical longcase on offer at Mitchells (17.5% buyer’s premium) of Cockermouth on September 11-12 he knew he simply had to have it.

This silver and labradorite floral necklace designed by Georg Jensen c.1915 sold for $17,000 (£10,970) at a recent auction held by Skinner of Boston.

Phillips have made a statement of intent by opening their new saleroom and exhibition space in the heart of Mayfair and on the doorstep of Sotheby’s and Bonhams.

On March 29, 1833, John Constable gave his daughter Emily a copy of Isaac Watts’s book ‘Songs, Divine and Moral’.

An appeal for a shorter sentence launched by a conman who scammed dealers at fairs across the country has been dismissed.

As Paris moved into top gear last week with the opening of the ‘Biennale des Antiquaires’ fair at the Grand Palais and the ‘Parcours des Mondes’ tribal art trail, the auction firm Piasa chose this as the moment to unveil their new headquarters at number 118 on the fashionable rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, set midway between Sotheby’s and Christie’s Paris rooms.

An antiques dealer who forged signatures of famous people such as Winston Churchill and Robert Louis Stevenson has been told he will have to sell his house to pay back more than £33,000 he took in through the scam.

The Art Fund has launched an appeal to raise the remaining £2.74m needed to save the Wedgwood collection from being split up and sold off.

Bonhams of Bond Street are to sell what is perhaps the most significant collection of cameos and intaglios seen on the market for decades.

This sixth issue Elizabeth I sovereign (1584-1586) was among seven English 16th and 17th century gold coins stolen from a dealer’s home in Norfolk in August.

This memorial design featuring a magnificent peacock resting on a bier and surrounded by myrtle leaves was painted by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones in 1886 following the tragic death of Laura Lyttelton, a friend of the artist who died a few days after giving birth to a son.

A West London auction house is facing court, charged with the sale of a modern elephant ivory carving under the Control of Trade in Endangered Species (Enforcement) (CITES) Regulations 1997.

Spink are reuniting the first two Victoria Crosses awarded during the First World War as part of a unique exhibition focusing upon the first four months of the conflict.

The William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow is to explore the intensity with which pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti depicted model Jane Morris, William’s wife.

The big comic story of the year – and one unlikely to be bettered – when two New York specialist dealers, Stephen Fisher and Vincent Zurzolo, paid $3.2m (£1.93m) for a copy of Action Comics No.1. When launched in June, 1938 it had originally cost just 10 cents.