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This Women’s Social and Political Union medal for valour was awarded to Mary Richardson, the Canadian-born militant suffragette who, in protest at the re-arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst in March 1914, slashed the ‘Rokeby’ Venus with an axe at the National Gallery.

Despite a year that saw substantial declines in brown furniture prices and a tailing off in the demand for general silver, most of the UK’s top provincial auctioneers held steady in a difficult market.

Ebay are warning their users to be vigilant after users of PayPal fell victim to a hi-tech scam in November and December. Many received a replicating virus that, camouflaged as an email from the online payment provider, tried to trick the recipient into sending sensitive information.

HOPES of establishing a national database of stolen art have taken a significant step forward. MPs on the parliamentary committee who recommended the database be set up three years ago gave the project a new boost after publicly criticising the Government for failing to act despite promises to do so.

FRANCE’S new auction watchdog has flexed its muscles for the first time, banning two paintings – one attributed to Van Gogh, the other to Toulouse-Lautrec – from sale on suspicion of being fakes.

Prior to the sale of two record-breaking lots of Beswick at Bonhams’ October 28 sale – a colour trial Galloway Bull (£8800) and the Spirit of Whitfield (£9500) – the auction record for Beswick could well have been the £3500 paid for this rare figure at Potteries Specialist Auctions on October 22.

There were several toy sales in the Midlands in late October, including on October 25 a 500-lot sale conducted by Fieldings (12.5% buyer’s premium) in the oak-panelled Great Hall of Old Swinford Hospital School in Stourbridge.

BY family tradition, this pair of steel handcuffs, right, were used to shackle Lissadell’s best known inhabitant, Constance Gore-Booth (then Countess Markievicz) shortly after her prominent role in the 1916 rebellion. Having fought with the insurgents, she was imprisoned as Dublin came under military rule and an effort was made to execute her for both treason and murder for her part in the action at The College of Surgeons, Saint Stephens Green.

The date of November 5 seemed apt for Spink’s (17.65% buyer’s premium) 623-lot sale of Orders, Decorations Campaign Medals and Militaria (ODM), the fireworks of Guy Fawkes Day recalling the whizz-bangs and crashes of wartime when many of these medals were won. Some of these bangs and crashes left themselves to metaphor, as records were falling all over the place.

IN common with a number of recent Irish house sales, Christie’s/Hamilton Osborne King’s (19.5% buyer’s premium) November 25 on-the-premises sale of the contents of Lissadell House, Ballinfull, County Sligo, had more than a touch of controversy.

A sizeable slice, almost a quarter of Sotheby’s sale on 20 November, was provided by one consignment, the 48 lots of silver and silver-gilt from the collection of the late Frederick Poke, an old school collector whose catholic tastes also included English furniture, Old Masters and Impressionist paintings.

TWO nations, two auctions, one plane. The French and English charity auctions of Concorde parts and memorabilia, held by Christie’s and Bonhams in Paris and London respectively, both attracted audiences of over 1000 and passed off as complete sell-outs, with no shortage of estimate-crushing prices for components and souvenirs from the now retired iconic aeroplane.

A very clear indication of the cachet attached to pre Revolutionary French silver, especially if it is a cutting-edge design by a maker of quality, was illustrated by the two pairs of 18th century wine coolers pictured here, which were the star attractions at Sotheby’s on November 20.

While Sotheby’s incorporated their best objects of vertu into their silver sale on November 20, Christie’s offered theirs in tandem with portrait miniatures in a 264-lot sale the following month on December 9. The vertu side of the sale performed particularly well, with hardly any failures, most of the 55 unsold lots coming from the miniatures.

The object on which the keenest attention in the works of art world was focused this month was this 161/2in (42cm) diameter, 15th century parcel-gilt and silvered bronze roundel depicting Mars, Venus, Cupid and Vulcan.

The technique of Limoges enamelling, imitated by a number of historically-minded potteries in the second half of the 19th century, was championed at Worcester by Thomas Bott and then by his son Thomas John Bott.

Although catalogued in 32 lots, it was the vendor’s wishes that this early 19th century doll’s house and associated doll’s house furniture should first be offered as a single lot with an estimate of £4000-6000 when they came under the hammer of Netherhampton Salerooms (12.5% buyer’s premium) on November 5.

Coins of England and the United Kingdom published by Spink. ISBN 1902040562 £18 hb

Stained glass, such a pre-occupation of the Victorians from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Aesthetics and the Arts and Crafts movement, has been something of a Cinderella among collectors for the best part of a century. Now, while the lovely and neglected Cinders may not exactly be the belle of the ball, interest in, and prices for, the medium are creeping up.

THE secret of great art is supposed to be not what’s put in, but what’s left out, but unfortunately the same doesn’t apply to art sales. The star lot of Christie’s (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) November 26 auction of Important British & Irish Art was meant to be this impressively decorative Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) portrait, right, of the celebrated exotic Georgian beauty, Mrs Baldwin.