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Earlier material in the last Comic Book Auctions (16% buyer’s premium) sale of the old year, which ended on November 25, included an original ink on card artwork of 1900 featuring Ally Sloper, whose pioneering comic debut had been made as early as 1867 in Judy, a comic rival to Punch.

'Cave Painting I' by British artist Jean Cooke (1927- 2008) is among the works on offer at Piano Nobile’s exhibition 'A Modern Venus'.

Adam Smith’s own copy bearing his simple bookplate makes £750,000 in London auction.

With the auction scene in Continental Europe at a traditional low ebb in the first month of the year, the focus for international art world activity shifts across to the US.

A late 19th century Meissen figure group offered at Leslie Hindman in Chicago features in ATG's selection of auction highlights in the US this winter.

Antiques trade bodies are stepping up their plans for a judicial review of the Ivory Act that will come into law later this year.

Edward Burd, who died in October, was a well-known dealer in English dial and wall clocks who was active on the provincial English antiques fair circuit.

Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98) was the toast of London during the latest Victorian art sales held in the capital, where buyers continued to covet blue-chip Pre-Raphaelite art, market-fresh material – and invest in female names.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

MADAM – Your new year’s resolutions piece (ATG No 2374) was thought-provoking, citing aspirations and concerns reflecting the current art and antiques market.

Among the first women potters recognised by the public as individual designers worthy of collecting were Hannah Barlow (1851-1916) and her sister Florence. The first women artists at Doulton’s Lambeth factory, they joined in 1871 and 1873 respectively.

Topping a number of good pre-Christmas clock sales was a rare table/bracket clock, among the last made by London ‘Golden Age’ name Daniel Quare (1649-1724) with Stephen Horseman, who became his partner at the Exchange Alley workshop in 1721.

A trademark nocturnal scene by Victorian painter John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-93) got away on low estimate for £80,000 at John Nicholson’s (25% buyer’s premium) of Haslemere in Surrey.

A 1627, Ulm first of Johannes Kepler’s 'Tabulae Rudolphinae…', an important astronomical work named in honour of the then Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, sold for SKr350,000 (£30,535) on December 7.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from January 15-31, 2019.

Christmas has little, if any, effect on collectors of vintage and antique toys, but that doesn’t stop auctioneers mounting festive season specials.

'A Book of Songs and Poems from the Old Testament and the Apocrypha', the Ashendene Press book of 1904 shown below, has in the past made as much as £2000 at auction.

Produced by Raphael Tuck & Sons c.1900, ‘Puppies Playtime’ is one of a pair of greeting card see-saws that sold for £140 in the book and ephemera section of a December 15 sale held by Lacy Scott & Knight (20% buyer’s premium).

The drive by, among others, the Royal Academy and the National Gallery to promote women’s importance in art would have required little effort had campaigners looked at the world of modern ceramics.

For many years New York’s major salerooms mounted auction series of Old Master paintings, drawings and sculpture in the first months of the year immediately following their Americana series.