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AFTER 32 years in business, Peter Heraty of Andwells Antiques, Hartley Witney, Hampshire, tells me that on June 28 he “will lock the door for the last time”, a couple of weeks before his 66th birthday.

World Textiles; A Concise History, by Mary Schoeser, published by Thames & Hudson (World of Art) ISBN 0500203695 £7.95sb

FRANCE: Knitting was a great leveller in the 18th century, it seems. An ivory pair of knitting needles, said to have once belonged to Marie-Antoinette, sold for €26,000 at Piasa (17.94% buyer’s premium) sale or royal memorabilia in Paris on May 21.

EXPECT around 45 dealers at Cooper Antiques Fairs’ popular Cheshire County Antiques Fair this weekend from June 20 to 22. This is Somerset-based organiser Sue Ede’s premier Northern fixture and is held three times a year at Arley Hall, near Knutsford.

Nineteenth century walking sticks, canes, umbrellas and riding crops were one of John Stewart Parry’s favourite collecting areas – he had more than 180 of them in myriad different forms from dogs’ heads to seashells. Offered on the fifth and final day of Bruton Knowles’ sale in May– the best of the series in terms of atmosphere, said auctioneer Simon Chorley – they all sold, albeit at auction rather than retail levels.

Cheffins will sell a Suffolk collection of printed creamwares in their June 25-26 sale. Specialist George Archdale has made many personal discoveries during the cataloguing of the £30,000 collection, including the origin of the popular transfer Palemon and Lavinia.

London 1753 by Sheila O’Connell, published by The British Museum Press. ISBN 0714126314 £24.99sb

EVEN if it means shipping their stock across the Atlantic, there are more and more of the British trade who are determined that the Americans reluctance to travel over here is not going to stop us selling to them over there.

David Rogers Jones has sold a lot of Welsh dressers in his 44 years as an auctioneer in the principality but only two of this rare form incorporating a grandfather clock. Peculiar to the mid-Wales county of Merionethshire, the form, c.1810, is well-known in the reference books but this is the first the auctioneer has seen since he sold another 15-20 years ago. And it’s a great example.

To you and me it’s just a 1950s enamel station sign but to railwayana enthusiasts – and to Gloucestershire Worcestershire Railwayana Auctions who are currently selling it at their first private treaty auction – this is quite simply the most desirable ‘totem’ ever to come on the market. So what’s all the fuss about?

Waddesdon Manor, the French chateau-style house built for the Rothschild banking family near Aylesbury, lost a group of around 100 gold boxes and other precious objects from its world-famous collections following a break-in in the early hours of the morning of June 10.

New European Union regulations regarding the collection of VAT on digital services mean that eBay will begin collecting VAT on seller fees from July 1.

The University of Central Lancashire is to offer a Master of Arts in antiques via the Internet. The new e-MA in antiques is intended for beginners who want to develop their interest in an area of antiques, pictures, and collectables, without the necessity of on-campus attendance.

The combination of a single-owner collection in a specialist niche corner of the market with a not over-large and mostly market-fresh selection of realistically estimated material were the keys to the warm reception that greeted Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of Scientific instruments in their Olympia rooms on May 28. All bar 15 of the 155 lots, just short of 90 per cent (92 per cent by value) changed hands for a total of £262,350.

November’s Asian Art in London series will again include an Award for Asian Art presented by AXA Art Insurance, the sponsors of the event for the third time. Dealers and auction houses participating in Asian Art in London are invited to enter two separate categories of the award – best two-dimensional object and best three-dimensional object – designed to reward excellence in the selling of Asian Art.

WHEN he died tragically in a walking accident in Vermont last October, John Stewart Parry was still in full flow as a collector. A former advertising executive who lived in Gloucestershire, he began to buy antiques in the 1980s first for his home, Abnash House in Stroud, and then for an investment trust of which he was the primary advisor.

Lack of Americans hits top dealers. As American buyers stayed away, sales by 400 of Britain’s top art and antiques dealers fell by almost a tenth last year. This was one of the key findings of the fourteenth annual British Antique Dealers’ Association survey covering trading in 2001-02, completed by 58 per cent of members including well-known names such as Richard Green, Mallett and S.J. Phillips.

VENERABLE top Mayfair dealers Partridge hold an exhibition of French clocks at their gallery at 144-146 New Bond Street, London W1 from June 12 to 28.

AN early 19th century bowfront chest of five over three drawers, mahogany strung with satinwood. Doesn’t sound too special does it? That’s until you realise that the description is of a fully fitted tea caddy measuring just 91/2in by 8in high (24 by 20cm). Lots of interest in this rare novelty saw it climb to take the top price of David Lay’s mammoth Penzance sale at £4400.

Highest bid among the 158 lots of Impressionist & Expressionist works on paper in the Tremmel collection auctioned by Ketterer Kunst on May 5-6 was the €130,000 (£89,700), just over top-estimate, paid in the room by a Rhineland dealer against six telephone bidders for Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Fränzi am Wasser Liegend (Fränzi Reclining at the Waterside, c.1910) in gouache, watercolour and chalk, 13 x 17in (33 x 43.5cm).