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Antiques Trade Gazette can confirm that Chiswick Auctions has proof of good title for a rare group of maps and charts, which the auction house sold last month.

The work of the MacMahon photographic studio of Aberdeen, this extraordinary carbon print was made in 1908 and depicts ‘Giant Cod Specimens…’ bought and cured by A&M Smith, a local fish processing and curing business.

Martin Tinney Gallery celebrates the centenary of Sir Kyffin Williams’ (1918-2006) birth with a selling exhibition of his paintings and works on paper.

A gloriously Welsh view of a jagged, grey slate quarry by JMW Turner (1775-1851) took top honours at Cardiff saleroom Rogers Jones (20% buyer’s premium).

One of just 100 copies of a scarce, privately published edition of poems called Salvo for Russia, produced in 1942 in aid of the ‘Comforts Fund for Women and Children of Russia’, was offered in a recent West Country sale.

Provenance played a key role in the performance of a small group of pictures formerly owned by one of Australia’s biggest artists, Sidney Nolan (1917-92).

Early recipe books can make for absorbing and, to modern readers, occasionally comic or puzzling reading, as demonstrated in three examples from recent sales.

Used to dramatic effect on the cover of the catalogue for a Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale, shown below is one of a collection of around 125 monochrome watercolour drawings of Irish lighthouses and the Irish coastline produced c.1860-67.

When Frances Noble, head of Dix Noonan Webb’s jewellery department, was shown this coronet with a family tradition connecting it to the Duke of Wellington, it was caked with dirt.

The central 350-lot section of the auction of clocks, watches and scientific instruments to be held by Skinner in Marlborough on April 20 comprises a single-owner collection of European tools.

A panel front from a cassone will feature in the April 24 sale of Old Master paintings to be held by Dorotheum in Vienna.

MADAM – Defra’s findings outlined in the post-consultation document include an extraordinarily impractical provision for the ‘de minimis’ exemption – requiring registration (with an as yet unspecified fee) of all objects with an ivory content below 10% created before 1947.

A Dutch auction house is planning to launch regular sales in London as, it says, the art and antiques market in Holland has contracted.

Piasa is holding a second auction devoted to the colourful works of the Ukrainian-born artist Sonia Delaunay (1885-1975) on April 26.

MADAM – I concur with everything that Michael Baggott wrote in ATG No 2235.

Richard Madley, a former director of Dreweatts, has been appointed UK agent for Sydney firm Shapiro Auctioneers, to source objects with an Australian background or provenance to be sold Down Under.

Despite visible condition issues, a pair of carved giltwood console tables, catalogued as c.1740 and later, sailed past modest expectations to bring £65,000 (plus 24% premium) at Dreweatts 1759 of Donnington Priory.

An oil by the famous Maltese painter Giuseppe Cali (1846-1930) fetched a five-figure sum when it went under the hammer at Moore Allen & Innocent (20% buyer’s premium) in Cirencester.