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The hangar saleroom at Christie’s South Kensington was full to overflowing for the much-publicised sale of the Poole Pottery Museum collection and archive on March 31.

THE massive catalogue of Küncker of Osnabrück (27.22/23 buyer’s premium) devoted to Classical, Byzantine and Islamic coins has fallen onto my desk.

THE first day of the March 13-14 angling sale held by Mullock Madeley at Ludlow Racecourse was devoted to the literature of the sport. Seen right is one of two complete runs of The Creel from the years 1963-67 that sold at £200 and £210. A set of all bar one of the ...How to Catch Them series, all in dust jackets and all bar the Pike book first editions, sold at £460.

The 20in (52cm) high dinanderie vase by Jean Dunand, pictured, right, with original black patina and sleek Art Deco outlines belying its early date of 1913, zoomed to €60,000 (£40,000), five times the estimate, at the Tajan (20.33% buyer’s premium) sale of 20th century decorative arts on March 4.

ALTHOUGH there were no blockbusters at the 778-lot February 20 sale at Charterhouse (15% buyer's premium), neither were there many casualties, with 86 per cent of the sale finding buyers.

A letter written and signed by Jean Harlow, which reveals an unexpectedly sensitive side to Hollywood’s original Blonde Bombshell, will go on sale at Byrne’s of Chester on Wednesday (March 31).

Few pieces of Victorian jewellery have survived in such sparkling condition as this Kashmir sapphire and diamond necklace which sold at Dreweatt Neate’s Donnington Priory saleroom near Newbury last week for £240,000 (plus 15/10% premium) – the highest ever price for jewellery at a provincial saleroom.

GRANTHAM auctioneers Golding Young, like many provincial operations, are changing their sales format this year, moving from specific “antique” sales and “general” sales to more inclusive events to meet the changing scene.

THREE large Art Deco plaster panels, two details shown right, which had lain unseen and unloved in the basement of a London property for years, had an extraordinary appeal which eluded both their owners and cataloguers judging by their reception at Wotton Auction Rooms (15% buyer’s premium).

FAMILIES with valuable homes and art collections may face extreme hardship and even bankruptcy after the Chancellor tore up the rule book on inheritance in the Budget.

YOU don’t see detailed architectural scenes that often on English porcelain. Such pieces are much more the preserve of Continental factories like Meissen, Sèvres or, most notably, Berlin. Their smooth, hard paste provides a better ground for the highly detailed, crisp painting these subjects demand. However, if topography is to be found on English porcelain, it is most likely be encountered on wares from the Derby factory which came nearest to emulating the Continental firms.

NOT every auctioneer, and certainly not every dealer, is happy with the coverage given to the antiques trade on television, but Norfolk auctioneers Holts (15% buyer's premium), who hold their specialist sales of antique and sporting guns in the suitably militaristic Duke of York’s Headquarters in Chelsea, have cause to be grateful for one TV series.

WEEKLY antique valuation days at their recently opened estate agency in Welshpool have begun to pay dividends for Shrewsbury-based auctioneers Halls (15% buyer's premium), and specialist Jeremy Lamond hopes that the firm’s presence there will help broaden their Welsh client base.

THE figures after Louis Taylor's (12.5% buyer's premium) March 8 & 9 sale at the Hanley salerooms added to auctioneer Clive Hillier’s belief that the whole antiques scene is considerably brighter now than it was last year. “The sale went better than I expected and comes on top of our generally weekly sales regularly totalling £20,000 to £25,000 against the £12,000-15,000 they used to take,” he said.

CHRISTIE'S have announced worldwide sales totalling £1.2bn ($2bn) for 2003. This includes auction sales of £1.1bn ($1.8bn) and private sales of £90m ($150m).

THE market for 19th century mahogany furniture remains, as Gloucestershire auctioneer Martin Lambert observed after Taylor & Fletcher, Humberts (10% buyer's premium) successful 455-lot mixed February 24 sale, extremely selective. But that is not a euphemism for moribund.

VENDORS wishing to protect their interests when an auction house becomes insolvent should use firms where at least one of the partners or directors is a member of the RICS.

The well-worn cliché about everyone in the trade wanting to buy the same few pictures was certainly in evidence at the March 9 sale of British and Continental pictures at Bonhams (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) at Knightsbridge when this highly commercial oil-on-canvas view of the Piazzatta, Venice, indistinctly signed Viviani, came under the hammer with a highly tempting estimate of £2000-3000.

KIDSON-Trigg (15% buyer's premium) reported a healthy turnout for their 725-lot February 26 sale with steady interest for collectable ceramics such as Beswick and the better-quality furniture attracting a mixture of local and UK private and trade buyers.

IT is always in the interest of auctioneers and the trade to talk the market up, but there does seem to be a general consensus among auctioneers that business this year so far has got off to a frisky start.