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THE first day of a Belle Epoque sale held by Doyle of New York on February 25-26 awoke what one might, with greater reason than most, term a sleeper – the remarkable piece of furniture, catalogued as “An Italian Baroque style Mahogany Bed”, seen right. The bed was part of the Woodruff collection, comprising stock from a former Hollywood business that from 1922-60 was a popular rental source for the film studios, but stock that for the past 40 or more years has been in storage in Oklahoma.

IN addition to technical excellence, decorative appeal and early date, sentiment is an important player in the sampler market.

BOUND volumes of Manchester United home match programmes from the 1950s seasons were the best sellers in the football section of a sporting memorabilia sale held by Bonhams Chester on January 28, with prices ranging from £520 to £1300 for the volume covering the 1957-58 season that brought the devastating Munich air disaster.

The highlight of the sale conducted by Bourne End Auction Rooms (12% buyer’s premium) near Marlow, Buckinghamshire, on March 4 was this pair of tin-glazed earthenware plates, right, made c.1740 by Saverio Grue at the Castelli factory in Naples.

WITH collectors’ taste in Modern British art shifting in recent years from pre-war to post-war, the once all-conquering Newlyn School has not generated as many headline-stealing results as it did in the late 1980s.

“COINS transmit the image of a ruler far more widely than any other medium available before photography.” Thus the blurb trumpeting the exhibition in the British Museum of portraits on coins.

BOUND in red morocco gilt, an autograph draft manuscript of one of the more important letters that make up the narrative of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloise – Lettre XXI, in which Saint-Preux writes about the women of Paris – was sold for €82,000 (£56,550) as part of the library of King Léopold III and Princess Lilian of Belgium at the Chateau d’Argenteuil near Waterloo. The sale was held by Sotheby’s Paris on December 11.

THE SPIRO collection, sold by Christie’s on December 3 included a few letters and documents of Spanish monarchs and a proclamation of July 1501, signed by both Ferdinand V and Isabella, that banned all unconverted Moors from Granada – the last step prior to the final expulsion of the Moors from Spain – was sold for £42,000.

WHAT would otherwise have been a sound enough sale at Andrew Grant Auctioneers (15% buyer's premium), Worcester, on February 19 provided two trade talking points – one positive, the other negative – after the differing fortunes of three lots among the ceramics.

LETTERS from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to members of his family are rarely seen on the market, but one lot in a Sotheby’s sale of December 9 presented no fewer that 40 letters and postcards addressed to his pianist brother Paul, among them some of the earlier known letters in his hand and, naturally enough, containing much on the subject of music. This lot found a buyer at £42,000.

SOTHEBY’S have just published their fourth quarter and year-end results for 2003, showing the company to be in a much better financial state than at the end of 2002.

CAMPAIGNERS against the illegal trade in ivory want to end the exisiting policy which allows any antique dealer to appraise the age of ivory in works of art.

WHEN Poole Pottery went into administration last June, it could have been a sad day for one of Britain’s best-known producers of table, giftwares and art pottery. But the Dorset pottery has risen phoenix-like under new ownership and is once again producing ceramics as well as launching four new giftware ranges.

ALTAR surrounds and other architectural elements from a 19th century Belgian church proved one of the bigger attractions at a February 8 sale held by in Los Angeles by Bonhams & Butterfields – a sale titled ‘Revival of the Centuries’.

INITIAL arguments in the £1.75m High Court dispute between Christie’s and Taylor Lynne Thomson over a pair of porphyry urns indicate that both parties intend to fight their corner vigorously.

PROMOTION is the strong point of Richard Gardner, chairman of the Petworth Art and Antique Dealers’ Association, and he tells me the association is holding a Treasure Hunt on April 24. The prize actually is well worth winning, a nice antique silver-gilt caster.

On a day when early pieces took the top prices at Mallams (15% buyer's premium) sale on March 3, one of the earliest was this late 16th century Venetian bronze inkwell, right.

Signed and inscribed by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, this short poem called ‘Fancy in the Clouds: a Marine Sonnet’ was written on a piece of seaweed and sent to Charles Lamb.

WILTSHIRE ceramics specialist Andrew Dando has been mounting annual selling exhibitions for more than a decade and the tradition goes on in 2004.

ALTHOUGH Oriental pieces were the main strength of Woolley & Wallis’s (15% buyer's premium) quarterly specialist ceramics sale on February 25, there was also evidence of the continued strength of the market for unusual examples of early English porcelain.