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This 8¾in (23cm) diameter Liverpool delft charger, dated 1738, is initialled MML for Michael and Mary Lightfoot, members of a Quaker family who lived in Chester County.

MADAM – I have been reading the responses in your letters pages from the antiques trade to the stringent ivory laws appearing around the world.

An ‘Unfashionable’ single-owner collection from a London club attracted trade and private buyers. The 98-lot sale on April 5 was held by British pictures specialist Harry Moore-Gwyn at 25 Blythe Road (20% buyer’s premium) in West Kensington.

Nearly a quarter of the sale total at the auction held by Harry Moore-Gwyn at 25 Blythe Road (20% buyer’s premium) in West Kensington on April 5 came from a collection of original cartoons.

A work by one of Lebanon’s most eminent painters, Khalil Saleeby (1870-1928), surfaced at Hansons (17.5% buyer’s premium) of Etwall in Derbyshire.

Tintin has had another good day out in Paris. In an Artcurial sale on April 8 a European collector paid €753,000 (£643,815), including premiums and taxes, to buy an ink drawing done by Hergé for the 1937 comic book Tintin in America.

A major attraction in a PBA Galleries (20/15% buyer’s premium) sale of April 6 was the Samuel Hessel ‘DNA’ collection of scientific papers, journals and books.

A Beatrix Potter collection running to 62 lots got a Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of March 30 up and running.

Victorian exuberance or Georgian elegance – you pays your money and takes your choice. At Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium) on April 5, it cost a great deal for the former and rather less for the latter.

Pictured here is one of several etchings by James Abbott McNeil Whistler that will feature in Swann Galleries’ sale of prints on May 2.

A mid-19th century oil painting depicting in detail a scene at the height of the Australian gold rush is a potential highlight of a Sotheby’s Australia sale next month.

Estimated at £500-800, a small Old Master painting of Christ wearing the crown of thorns drew spectacular competition at Adam’s of Dublin on April 9. It came from an institution in the Irish capital which the saleroom said was “doing some spring cleaning”. It was given the pick of around 100 paintings.

A small 6¼ x 11in (16 x 27 cm) oil on canvas by Nicolas De Staël (1914-55), titled Composition and dating from 1950, is one of the potential highlights of the contemporary art auction to be held by Dorotheum in Vienna on May 31 and June 1.

The English porcelain specialist Simon Spero opens his 37th catalogued exhibition this week in his Kensington shop.

Johannes Schröder (1870-1942) was not only a wealthy German merchant but also a globetrotter and a pioneer in utilising the invention of photography to document his time.

An intriguing 18th century watercolour of a tree struck by lightning fetched a multi-estimate sum at Forum Auctions’ (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) March 30 sale in London.

Offered by Keys (20% buyer’s premium) on April 6, the Sir Malcolm Arnold Collection proved to be a problematic one.

An Ushak Star carpet fragment measuring 5ft 2in x 6ft 1in (1.57 x 1.85m) will feature in Jeffrey S Evans’ April 29 sale of antiques, decorative arts and 20th century design in Mount Crawford.

Confirmation of market tastes in horology could be gleaned from major spring sales in the provinces...

Published in 1631 in Rinteln, a small town in Lower Saxony, Friederich Spee’s Cautio Criminalis, seu de Processibus Contra Sagas is a first edition in much later boards of a book that has been described as the first serious attack on witchcraft trials and their use of torture.