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LAST week’s ATG included a short piece on a 1566 poem by Patrick Adamson, giving thanks for the birth of a son to Mary Queen of Scots, that made £3100 in a Dominic Winter sale of April 6.

A SECTION of the market which is very firm is that for Russian coins. There are a lot of recently enriched Russians who have been able to transfer their wealth out of the country.

FOUR days prior to the Scientific and Engineeering sale April 3, CSK had another sellout success with 64 lots of model locomotives and stock, the bulk of which came from the collection of the late David Jenkinson.

PIMLICO dealer in 1940s design items Alex Von Motke, has suffered as much as anyone else from the dearth of American customers, frightened off by the strength of the pound.

ON what was a mixed day for furniture sales at Lyon & Turnbull when one or two very elegant pieces failed to get away, there was a deal of interest at the Edinburgh salerooms in this rather unprepossessing George III mahogany writing cabinet on stand, right.

ENTERPRISING Essex organiser Robert Bailey seldom seems to stop moving round the country and this holiday weekend sees him in the heart of the Potteries.

The beginning of the end is in sight to the lengthy compensation payment process in the ‘international’ tranche of the Sotheby’s-Christie’s price-fixing case.

A GATHERING of Europe’s leading art market professionals is calling on the European Commission to delay extending the worst effects of Droit de Suite after 2012 in the UK.

Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull have announced substantial changes to their buyer’s premium structure.

A LONDON dealer has exposed the latest scam attempting to trick the trade out of thousands of pounds. And, in doing so, he has discovered a quick and simple way of checking whether others have already been defrauded: using the internet.

On his way to join the QE2 for a Mediterranean cruise on April 16, John Sullivan knew there was something he must do.

Thanks to a lively book trade and the introduction of new departments, turnover at Bloomsbury Auctions has increased by 38 per cent in the first quarter of 2005 compared to the same period in 2004.

Capping a sell-out sale of the first instalment of a private collection of nutmeg graters at Woolley and Wallis on April 20 was this unusual Victorian novelty specimen fashioned as a hinged strawberry, which sold for £8200.

The Conservatives have vowed to fight Droit de Suite in their election manifesto. “Conservatives believe the Artist’s Resale Right will be highly detrimental to the British art market, and will benefit competitors outside the EU,” the manifesto reads.

In November 1933, the Queen Mother (then Duchess of York) wrote to Charles Edmund Brock (1870-1938), a noted illustrator and society painter, commissioning a family portrait.

Government report reveals impact of levy... and the cost The introduction of Droit de Suite in the UK could result in the loss of up to ten art dealing jobs for every artist who would benefit from the tax.

Baroness Rawlings of Burnham Westgate has accepted the invitation of the British Antique Dealers’ Association to become their new president. She will replace Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville who has filled the role since 1995.

TRADITIONAL British pictures have not been one of the strongest areas of the art market in the last couple of years, with sporting paintings being particularly stuck in the doldrums.

Dreweatt Neate (Buyer's premium: 17.5 per cent)SOMETIMES one could be forgiven for thinking that the words ‘Oriental work of art sleeper’, as, for instance, ‘English middle order collapse’ don’t require spaces between them and that, German-style, they are all one word.

Expertise rewarded, a surprise (and happy) ending and just a touch of regret... the story of an unassuming set of four late 19th/early 20th century chairs, one shown right, offered by Greenslade Taylor Hunt (15% buyer’s premium) at Taunton on March 15, was the very stuff of auctioneering romance.