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While classic silver chugs along at prices scarcely unchanged since the ’70s boom, novelty pieces provide the market with a buoyant area. The 90-lot silver section offered at Crewkerne on September 13 by Lawrences (15% buyer’s premium) saw only nine fail to get away and no casualties among the novelty pieces from abroad.

The imminent cessation of all sales – including wine – at Sotheby’s Chicago has left a gap in the Mid-West market that newly-established wine auctioneers Edward Roberts International are keen to fill. Brainchild of Edward Robert Brooks, the much-travelled head of Christie’s and the short-lived Phillips’ North American wine departments, Edward Roberts will mount their first live sale of fine and rare wines at The Union League Club of Chicago on Saturday, November 10.

It’s a case of two days only with Ryan Fine Art’s (74 Vanbrugh Park, Blackheath, SE3 7JQ. Tel: 020 8293 5300) exhibition of over 80 Victorian and European oils, watercolours and prints.

“For the really top things there’s no shortage of buyers, but the middle ground is weaker,” affirmed Stephen Mould of Sotheby’s wine department. “If you’ve got large parcels that depend on the trade, then bidders are more cautious. But if you’ve got small quantities of the finest things there are plenty of private buyers prepared to pay good money.”

There were few plate books in this year’s Arts of India sale at Christie’s, held on September 27, but one notable result was provided by Emily Eden’s Portraits of the Princes & Peoples of India, published by J. Dickinson in 1844.

A TAKE-UP of 570 lots of the 600 on offer at Clarke Gammon– mainly from a local deceased estate – and a grand total of £75,000 revealed a market in buoyant mood at Guildford on 11 September where the best of a number of highlights answered the current demand for early textiles.

FRANCE: Francis Briest, France’s leading auctioneer of modern and contemporary art, is to join up with the modern art dealers and booksellers Artcurial (acquired by Nicolas Orlowski from Oréal in 1999).