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The sale of a comprehensive collection of Channel Islands silver in Guernsey provides a perfect opportunity to test the market temperature...

Two opposing views on the big questions facing the trade. This week, ATG asks whether auction houses should open on Saturdays to accommodate more private buyers...

For its annual winter show, 'In Situ', The Millinery Works gallery in Islington shows off the diversity of its offerings while celebrating the Arts & Crafts furniture in which it has long specialised.

The material connected with William Butler Yeats in the family home of his son, the late Senator Michael, has proved as controversial – and profitable – as the great man’s writing itself.

It is possible to have too much of a good thing in a narrow collecting market – a feature amplified when the leading player has left the field.

The Albemarle Street gallery Connaught Brown rounds out the year with an annual winter exhibition.

A week before Fonsie Mealy’s William Butler Yeats sale, the auctioneers’ neighbours, kith and rivals Mealy’s (20% buyer’s premium) had a couple of eyecatchers in its November 8 sale at Castlecomer.

Born in Vienna in 1932, Peter was forced to flee from Hitler’s invading Anschluss of Austria. He spent most of the war years in hiding in France, eventually escaping to Switzerland with the help of the French Resistance.

A recent silver sale at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury included a cache of early spoons from the collection of David Constable. Each had been illustrated and discussed in his magnum opus, 'Silver Spoons of Britain', published in 2016.

Natural history works, together with books, prints, even pictures featuring aspects of hunting, were a key component of a Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of November 2 billed only as The Library of a European Gentleman.

Elizabeth Bowman, née Palmer, who established Bowman Antiques Fairs in 1973, passed away peacefully on Monday November 13 in Leeds General Infirmary.

Entered into the October 21 sale at Bishop & Miller (18% buyer’s premium) by a Suffolk vendor thinning out his collection, these carved boxwood nutcrackers, right, made an immediate impact on bidders at the Stowmarket rooms.

Originally published in parts in the years 1804-12, George Brookshaw’s Pomona Britannica contains 90 colour-printed and hand finished aquatint and stipple-engraved plates of fruits then cultivated in Britain (pineapple pictured below).

MADAM – I cannot believe that I am the only one amused, confused and puzzled by your report (ATG No 2317) of the magnificent lacquer panel by the Japanese master Shibata Zeshin being chosen as the “outstanding work offered by an auction house” and gaining for Bonhams the Asian Art in London award at this autumn’s festival.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period November 16-22, 2017. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

A Sino-Tibetan gilt-bronze of a serene Amitayus confounded modest expectations to sell for $690,000 (£518,000) at the Neal Auction Gallery in New Orleans.

Though probably better known for his bronze and chryselphantine Art Deco figures, Austrian sculptor Josef Lorenzl also worked for Viennese ceramics factories and, in particular, Goldscheider, for whom he designed the extremely popular Butterfly Girl.

The dual appeal of Maltese silver lies in both a sense of national pride and a very limited supply.

A December 7 sale of European ceramics at Bonhams will incorporate 130 pieces of Neapolitan porcelain from a single private source.

MADAM – I wrote to my MP in February regarding the ivory issue and his reply stated that the consultation was going to be on ‘modern’ ivory!