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This intricately detailed model of an English butcher’s shop, below, is part of a group of items consigned from the estate of a private collector to the June 15 auction of toys held by Pook & Pook in association with Noel Barrett.

Target of a London silver specialist, this pair of late Victorian silver fluted vases was the best-seller at East Sussex auction house Burstow & Hewett (20% buyer’s premium).

In 2006 a well-known philatelist submitted three important penny red stamps on cover to the Royal Philatelic Society (‘RPSL’) for an opinion on authenticity. The response came that they had been ‘faked’. The process was repeated in 2014 and the same reply received.

A group of 15 works on paper by Salvador Dalí (1904-89) which were produced as Christmas card designs will be offered in Paris this summer. They are estimated to raise up to €1m at Artcurial’s Modern and Impressionist Art auction in Paris, writes Alex Capon.

Almost wholly reliant on slavery, the tobacco industry was the subtle target of British Abolitionists 50 years before Britain outlawed slavery and nearly a century before the American Civil War.

In any ‘top 10’ list of 30th birthday party themes, a 1980s or ‘90s leitmotif ranks high.

Two impressive golden bowls presented by the king of Siam to an enterprising Danish admiral, businessman and politician star in Bruun Rasmussen’s May 28 auction in Copenhagen.

Catalogued as ‘Art Nouveau… manner of Charlotte Rhead’, this pair of tube-lined tiles went at 10 times the estimate at Trevanion & Dean’s (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale in Whitchurch.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period May 8-15, 2019. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

Discoloured, stained and in a crudely restored old binding, a scarce hunting work of 1704 was sold for a much higher than expected £1400 at a recent Hansons (20% buyer’s premium) sale.

The American artist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is best known for the high-society ‘swagger’ portraits that had earned him fame and fortune, but the watercolours he produced in greater number are more commonly available at auction.

MADAM – David Southwell (Letters, ATG No 2392) makes a good point but there are reasons for auctioneers refusing credit cards.

One of the more successful acts in a recent American magic and conjuring sale involved the appearance among the literary contributions of a doubly inscribed copy of Harry Kellar’s 'A Magician’s Tour' of 1886.

A round-up of art and antiques news from the previous seven days, including writers’ association English PEN launching a campaign to raise the required funds to buy the copy of 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover' used by the judge in the infamous obscenity trial following its sale at Sotheby's last year.

A watercolour by John Nixon (1755-1818) showing St Paul’s Cathedral and the City of London from Regent’s Park in the early days of the land’s development is offered at Guy Peppiatt Fine Art for £6500.

Inherited Dutch Old Masters offered alongside recently acquired modern works by artists such as Walter Sickert, Edward Seago and Gerald Kelly proved a winning formula at Dreweatts’ (25% buyer’s premium) country house dispersal held on May 1 at Donnington Priory.

Billed as the first printed edition of the most authoritative medical text in the Islamic world, a 1593 copy of a work known in the English-speaking world as Avicenna’s ‘Canon of Medicine’ was part of a recent London sale.