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The Komai family of sword makers and armourers were among the many Japanese metalworkers courting a new clientele during the Meiji period (1868-1912).

Estimated at $2500-3500, this micromosaic plaque depicting the Rape of Europa hammered for $13,000 (£10,300).

Very few English Golden Age clocks signed by Ambrose Gardner are recorded.

Antiquities from the collection of famed works of art dealer Ernest Brummer (1891-1964) sold for a combined total of over $2m at Hindman (26/20/15% buyer’s premium) in Chicago.

A lot in a recent Andrew Jones (25% buyer’s premium) auction that will doubtless merit further research was an early 19th century French self-portrait.

Trained at the Krakow School of Fine Arts as well as the Paris École des Beaux Arts, Jacek Malczewski (1854-1929) is credited for the rise in popularity of symbolism in late 19th and early 20th-century Poland.

Few people can profess to know more about the 1910-12 Japanese Antarctic Expedition than the Arizona book dealer Chet Ross.

Held by the same private New England family since 1792, a copy of 'A Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean' complete with its map came for sale at Bonhams Skinner (28/26/20% buyer’s premium).

A design for a swan-shaped pendant suspended by a gracefully curved neck and bearing a scene of two more swans is among the highlights at an exhibition on the drawings and sketches of René Lalique (1860-1945).

Dealer Peter Harrison has sold a recently reidentified portrait by 17th century painter Mary Beale (1633-99) to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

From 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' to 'The Last Duel', films nearly always depict the Middle Ages as dark, dingy and beset by bad weather.

Among the many highlights of the Alan and Simone Hartman collection at Bonhams New York is a copy of the monumental catalogue of the famed Bishop collection of Chinese jades. The deluxe volume, once owned by the last tsar of Russia, carries expectations of $100,000-150,000 as part of the 114-lot dispersal on December 14.

A group of letters sent from a clipper ship captain in Shanghai during the Second Opium War (1856-60) to his sons in the Charlestown area of Boston resounded with bidders at Merrill’s Auctioneers (21% buyer’s premium) in Williston, Vermont on November 3.

Scrap of paper came as result of half a manuscript book being chewed into ‘confetti’ by Steinbeck’s dog

A fine pair of 18th century English chairs sold for $120,000 (£100,000) in Asheville, North Carolina, on November 16-18.

Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) arrived on the Amalfi Coast in 1923 and ultimately created more than 100 works there based on the landscape.

Eminent artist stepped aside once he saw the monumental figure by younger colleague Maillol