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Last month in Harrogate, auctioneers Morphets held a sale of what is thought to be the biggest collection of vintage railway posters ever to come on the market.

DORCHESTER saleroom Duke's achieved the highest price for a UK regional auctioneer so far this year when this Qianlong mark and period vase sold at £625,000 on February 11.

IT should be a brighter year ahead for trade according to the 2009 LAPADA Membership Survey.

WORCESTERSHIRE auctioneer Philip Serrell has been asked to sell, at short notice, Cotswolds School furniture from the dormitories of Hazelrigg Hall, now part of Loughborough University.

SIGNS of recovery at the top end of the art market were seen again as greater levels of international bidding emerged at the latest contemporary art auction series in London.

FOLLOWING the severe winter weather that has struck the East Coast of the US, Freemans of Philadelphia chose to postpone for a week the sale of the Lehman Brothers Collection Part II.

IT is in the nature of display cabinets not to stand out. By definition they are unobtrusive vehicles intended to take a back seat to their contents.

Faced with the biggest crisis in its history, the Hôtel Drouot, the central Paris auction venue, has announced sweeping changes to how it is run.

John Ward, head of Sotheby’s New York silver department, said it was the piece of American silver that had it all: “Large size, great condition, beautiful design by an idiosyncratic maker, fresh provenance, and a great story.”

SEVERAL dealers at Sunbury Antiques Market at Kempton Park on Tuesday, January 26, were duped by a woman using a stolen chequebook.

The Norwich dealer James Brett is to sell 300 pieces of his stock of English and Continental furniture and decorative items in a single-vendor sale at Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchet on March 9.

A SURVEY of members by the British Antique Dealers Association has found that late payments as a result of the recession are causing a significant number of them cash-flow problems.

INTERNATIONAL Coin Exchange, a new firm of Dublin-based auctioneers, will hold their first sale on February 19.

If the price paid for Alberto Giacometti's (1901-1966) sculpture L'Homme qui Marche I is anything to go by, then the art market is now striding out of recession. Selling for £58m (plus premium) at Sotheby's evening sale on February 3, it became the most expensive object ever sold at auction.

SERIOUS levels of demand emerged for works at the very top end of the art market as this month’s flagship Impressionist and Modern art auction series raised a combined hammer total of £225.8m, massively up on the £108.8m for the equivalent series last year.

MAJOR American museums played an active role as both buyers and sellers in the latest Old Master sales in New York.

CHRISTIE’S have announced a 24 per cent year-on-year fall in sales for 2009 to £2.1bn.

A PAIR of silver-gilt waiters made by William Burwash for William Beckford, “the wealthiest commoner in England” who built the lavish Gothic Revival Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire, sold for £36,000 at auction last week.

A PENCIL and watercolour sketch showing men at work on a celebrated escape tunnel was a major attraction in a log or record compiled in 1943-45 by a Scottish P.O.W. sold by Lyon & Turnbull of Edinburgh for £3200 on January 13.

A MAN arrested in connection with passing fraudulent cheques to London dealers has appeared in court.