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The legal impasse surrounding the restitution of thousands of historical documents and manuscripts from the scandal-hit Aristophil investment scheme was finally broken last week.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning lots fall flat... but annotated Dorian Gray leaves treble the estimate

Typewriters on which famous books came into existence have featured on these pages before, but not for some time – and certainly not machines of a kind that that continue to be used by their owner to this day.

Since its launch in 2002 the TEFAF Art Market Report has established itself as the art and antiques trade’s key annual barometer of size and trends.

The diverse collection of Jeffrey M Kaplan is making various appearances under the hammer this spring.

Past playthings by a host of famous vintage toy manufacturers will feature in the next Signature sale of Toys and Trains held by the specialist auction house Bertoia in Vineland, New Jersey, on March 25.

A crease that runs around the lower part of the dust jacket detracts somewhat from the appeal of a first impression copy of the first of Ian Fleming’s Bond books, Casino Royale of 1953, but it sold for £16,000 in a March 1 sale held by Bonhams (25/20/12% buyer’s premium).

Possibly the first printed reference to a ‘Great White’ shark attack is found in a four-page pamphlet, printed in Naples in 1721, from which the woodcut shown here is taken.

Dealers and fairs are embracing the ‘mix it up’ approach to offering a wide range of styles and eras, as noted in our BADA fair preview (ATG No 2282).

It is not often that market economists agree, and so it goes with the TEFAF Art Market Report’s current and previous authors. Economics is, after all, not an exact science and analysing a market as opaque as art and antiques is certainly problematic.

The Pittsfield, Massachusetts, auction house Fontaine’s has a track record of selling good examples of horology and has achieved some very high prices recently for elaborate English clocks made for the Chinese market.

An academic report based on a small sample of dealers and auctioneers has called for “significant structural changes” to the laws governing the sale of ivory.

With BBC Radio 4 currently offering a season of programmes focusing on the Red Planet in fact and fiction, a couple of books from the Edgar Rice Burroughs series of Martian fantasies that made high prices in a recent US sale are an appropriate choice for these reports.

Rare painting by 19th century American artist achieves record price at Bonhams

A Chinese Kangxi period triple gourd vase that once belonged to the financier JP Morgan will feature as one of the highlights in Heritage Auctions’ inaugural Asian Art sale in Dallas on April 2.

Concerns are mounting that a new government money laundering watchdog will lead to further red tape for dealers and auctioneers in the UK.

Crymogaea sive rerum Islandicarum… is a very rare history of Iceland by Arngrimur Jónsson, a scholar and teacher also known as Arngrimur the Learned.

Among the picture highlights of Peter Wilson’s (24% buyer’s premium) Fine Art Sale on March 2 in Nantwich was a coastal sunset scene by prolific Birkenhead artist Samuel John Lamorna Birch (1869-1955).

This large, 6ft (1.8m) diameter circular oil on canvas, 'April' is the work of the Nabis painter Maurice Denis. It is one of three ceiling panels commissioned from the artist by the musician Ernest Chausson for his Parisian town house between 1894 and 1899.

A lithograph of David Roberts’ (1796-1864) lost painting The siege and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans under the command of Titus took top honours at Staffordshire auction house Cuttlestones (17.5% buyer’s premium) on March 2-3.