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The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association (ABA) has scrapped its sponsorship deal with Amazon-owned AbeBooks after the online book portal chose to quit selling in four countries.

Two Charles Rennie Mackintosh chairs made for Glasgow’s Argyle Street Tea Rooms starred at Lyon & Turnbull’s Decorative Arts sale in Edinburgh last week.

The white-glove sale of the Shannon collection of jewellery at Woolley & Wallis was topped at £22,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) by a gold bracelet by Omar Ramsden.

A pottery has stood in the Welsh village of Ewenny for five centuries but the collecting market tends to focus on those pieces produced under the influence of the Arts & Crafts movement in the late 19th century.

Prices for the best British automobilia are slowly catching up with the huge sums regularly paid for advertising and promotional material in the US.

A selection of preview highlights from upcoming American auctions, including a terracotta bust by Maurice Guiraud-Rivier.

The UK art and antiques trade is calling for an overhaul of the “archaic and regressive system” of business rates and dismissed the Budget rates relief announcement as “too little too late”.

On June 13, 1913, just five days after the infamous death of Emily Wilding Davison under the king’s horse at the Derby, two Suffragettes set fire to the Hurst Park grandstand in Surrey.

A German silver cigarette case, sold for £4600 at C&T Auctioneers (20% buyer’s premium) in Tunbridge Wells on October 24, was engraved with a detailed scene from the Siege of Mafeking – the famous Boer War defence of a small town commanded by Robert Baden-Powell.

Copenhagen auction house Bruun Rasmussen and London dealer Grace Tsumugi Fine Art were the recipients of the 2018 Asian Art in London Awards, co-sponsored by ATG.

“The chances of finding one that had been bought in a £90 box lot was probably one in a million; the chances of finding two more on the same day are incalculable.” Scientific instruments expert Hugo Marsh was talking about specialist camera lenses he was shown in September, first by a south-coast vendor, then by a West Country enthusiast, which sold at Special Auction Services (17.5% buyer’s premium) at Newbury on October 23.

British watercolours and oils from the 18th and 19th centuries grabbed bidders’ attention at a recent Oxford auction, proving there is life in this traditional market given the right artists and good provenance.

Yolanda Sonnabend’s (1935-2015) costume and stage designs helped revolutionise the look of British ballet.

Pictures formed a prominent part of Lyon & Turnbull’s (25/20% buyer’s premium) Kirkton House sale earlier this month as the contents of the Regency manse near Montrose were dispersed from the auction house’s Edinburgh saleroom.

MADAM – Responding to your article in ATG No 2365 ('UK salerooms 'not aware' of new laws on deactivated firearms'), I felt compelled to write in.