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Christie’s evening sale of Contemporary art in New York last night posted a hammer total of $435.5m (£294.2m).

Barnett Newman (1905-70) and Gerhard Richter (b.1932) starred at Sotheby’s evening sale of Contemporary art last night as the run of strong performing sales in this sector showed little sign of abating.

Holding a major silver sale days after the melt price has plummeted by about £3 an ounce is hardly ideal timing.

Sotheby’s lost $22.3m from January to March 2013, more than twice the amount for the same period in 2012.

The highlight of Lyon & Turnbull’s sale of Decorative Arts was this copper and brass electrolier made in the workshops of the designer and architect William Arthur Smith Benson c.1900.

Art dealer Niall Fairhead is leading a new campaign to persuade the Government to raise the Artist’s Resale Right threshold from €1000 to the €3000 stipulated by the European Commission.

A painting by Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) entitled ‘Le petit pâtissier’ was the top lot of Christie’s latest evening sale of Impressionist & Modern art in New York.

Pearls and coloured stones remain strong – but, fuelled by interest from China (and, to a lesser, extent, the Middle East), so does amber.

Paul Cézanne’s ‘Les pommes’ led the way at Sotheby’s latest evening sale of Impressionist & Modern Art in New York.

Standing in the same spot where he had placed the winning £3.25m bid for an Egyptian statue of Isis six months before, London dealer Daniel Katz was again in action at Christie’s South Kensington’s latest antiquities sale.

The ambitious project that made 210,000 publicly-owned oil, tempera and acrylic paintings available to view online for free has taken another important step forward thanks to winning £125,000 funding.

It has a face value of ten shillings but a price tag of Aus$3.5m (£2.3m) at Coinworks, the specialist dealers and auctioneers of Melbourne.

Two auction houses are joining forces in the latest shake-up to affect the Melbourne scene.

Last week was a busy one for glass and ceramics in the London rooms with five auctions taking place over the space of 48 hours and some bullish prices for top pieces.

Paris auctioneers Gros & Delettrez have announced the sale of 350 lots of haute couture from Danielle Luquet de Saint Germain, muse to the late Yves Saint Laurent in the 1960s, and later an artistic advisor at Dior.

The original autograph draft manuscript for Gerard Manley Hopkins’ 1879 poem ‘Binsey Poplars’ has been acquired by the Bodleian Libraries.

A single pearl-drop earring worn by Charles I at his execution in 1649, a maharaja’s coat richly embroidered with pearls c.1870, and a necklace of cultured pearls given to Marilyn Monroe by Joe DiMaggio in 1954 – all part of an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum this autumn.

Fellows’ latest quarterly Vintage & Modern Wristwatch auction included a rare 1940s Rolex Oyster, the so-called ‘monobloc’ chronograph.

Art dealer Hillel ‘Helly’ Nahmad, the high-profile owner of the Helly Nahmad Gallery in New York, has been named on a list of people charged with running an illegal gambling business.

One of the highlights of the latest raft of Islamic auctions in London was an unusual half-moon-shaped 10th/11th century granite temple step from Sri Lanka which had spent years in a Devon garden.