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Mallett revealed a 47.6 per cent rise in turnover and a 20 per cent rise in pre-tax profits in 2002, described by chairman George Magan as “one of the most challenging years” in the history of the London dealership.

Scrap it or at least make life easier for the trade, new study demands: THE European Union should look again at the whole issue of Import VAT and art market red tape, say The European Fine Art Foundation.

SOTHEBY’S have announced that they have given up trying to find a buyer for the controlling stake of disgraced former chairman A. Alfred Taubman.

IN the wake of recent reports on credit card fraud emanating from Indonesia, dealer association LAPADA are advising members on how best to protect themselves.

IF THERE is one objet d’art that best characterises the antiques market at present it is the curate’s egg – good in parts, but bad overall. The flawed ovum’s brighter regions encompass most low-value collectables – ceramics included.

European Union rules to combat money laundering due to come into force in June will oblige businesses accepting cash payments of more than €15,000 (£9400) to adopt a raft of new procedures.

AFTER what seems an unending number of complaints about unscrupulous online fair guides charging for unwanted advertising, the Antiques Trade Gazette has now heard about what appears to be a new scam.

SOTHEBY’S have started a new staff review and admit that further redundancies are likely.

FOLLOWING last week’s Dealers’ Diary report that Bargain Hunt was banned from the Great Northern Antiques and Collectors’ Fair, another organiser says the TV show is not welcome at his event.

Coming up in Lincoln: “ENGLAND expects every man to do his duty.” Nelson’s famous command was to be his last and effectively signalled the end of the Battle of Trafalgar. Details surrounding the start of the campaign are much more sketchy, but on February 20 Lincoln auctioneers Thomas Mawer & Son will be offering a memorandum written by Nelson to launch the famous battle.

US: What was the impact of the sluggish economy and the downward DOW coupled with 150,000 troops in the Gulf on the New York Ceramics Fair? Well, barely a dent in enthusiasm or sales, much less a blemish on attendance in the event organised by the California-based Caskey-Lees enterprise.

The Red House, the former home of designer William Morris acquired last month by the National Trust, is due to open to the public in Bexleyheath later this summer. But aficionados of the Arts and Crafts movement who cannot bear to wait that long should take a look at the Clarke Gammon sale in Guildford on February 25, where the residual contents of the Victorian house are being dispersed.

NEW YORK specialist dealers in movie posters Posteritati hold some beguiling selling shows, but they look like being onto an international winner with their current one – French Gangsters & The New Wave – which runs at their gallery at 239 Centre Street until March 4.

NEW YORK: THE North American linkage between gardens and antiques – one some English dealers have benefited from – reaches new heights from February 20 to 23 when New York-based Stella Show Management mount a fair dedicated to outdoor collectables.

MAYFAIR’S only specialist in tribal art, the Gordon Reece Gallery, hold an exhibition Gabbehs: an idiosyncratic art form from February 21 to March 29.

TIME waits for no man, the saying goes, and clients of Abraham-Louis Bréguet were certainly reminded of this fact when paying their monthly instalments to the Swiss-born watchmaker for Souscription pocket watches like this example right which featured at Woolley & Wallis’s sale on January 29.

To date this year Bonhams (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) have held five sales of furniture and carpets. These weekly sales are making a return to their Knightsbridge rooms for the first time in around 20 years after a recent peripatetic period of moving from Chelsea – their long time abode – to Bayswater and briefly back to Chelsea again.

BESWICK is one of the strongest areas of the 20th century collectable ceramics market so it was not surprising to see trade and private collectors packing these Leicestershire rooms at Gildings to bid on a large single-owner collection from a local deceased estate. What was surprising were the lengths to which bidders would go.

The first furniture sale of the year at Sotheby’s Olympia (20/12% buyer’s premium) was a 272-lot gathering on January 14 which saw two-thirds of the contents change hands.

The Spring Fine Art & Antiques Fair at Olympia, which will be held in London from February 25 to March 2, has received a record amount of publicity thanks to this Graham Sutherland (1903-1980) portrait of Churchill, right.