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While the market shows increasingly discerning tastes, quality definitely counts at auction.

The Victorian Conservative politician Lord Coventry is believed to have commissioned this portrait of favourite hounds Rambler and Marksman.

Never out of fashion, the best furniture by Robert Thompson is going through one of its periodic surges – as evident at Wilkinson’s Doncaster rooms last month (ATG No 2369) and at Sworders of Stansted Mountfichet (ATG No 2363) in October.

This seasonal watercolour of figures ice skating in the Lake District (below) sold for a mid-estimate £3600 at local Cumbria saleroom Mitchells (20% buyer’s premium) on November 28.

High-priced luxury handbags and other luxury goods made the most money at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) sale of Costume, Accessories and Textiles at Leyburn but collectors’ interest was more focused on a private collection of hat pins.

Three modestly valued works in regional sales, including a mini-sleeper at an Essex auction.

A copy of WB Yeats’ The Wanderings of Oisin… offered in a recent Irish sale was an example of Fisher Unwin’s 1892 second issue. That is rare enough, but this copy bore an inscription that made it very special indeed.

A notable feature of the end-of-year book sales in 2018 was the number of online auctions held by the major salerooms.

MADAM – Re: ivory ban. I would very much like to add my tuppence worth to this ongoing issue.

MADAM – Have we lost the plot? Recently the ATG letters page has been taken over by debating whether one television show about antiques is better than the others available.

Packed with a varied selection of precisely 1000 lots, a very thick catalogue rounded off one saleroom’s year in a December 11-12 sale.

Showing hardly any signs of wear and signed by JK Rowling – and originally acquired at a special signing at Harrods, as revealed by a laid-in ticket – a near pristine first issue copy of 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone' of 1997, appeared at auction earlier this month.

Illuminated manuscript sales of recent times will be the subject of a future review, but seen here is something a little different in that line offered as the very first lot in a December 1 sale of such material held by Bloomsbury Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from January 4-31, 2019.

Chinese bidders were the driving force at this autumn’s German and Austrian auctions of Asian art.