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Donations to museums via inheritance tax schemes grew 22% in the past year, according to the latest Arts Council annual report.

Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R Vance Jr, has formed an Antiquities Trafficking Unit to focus on potentially looted artefacts in New York.

Must-have Christmas presents in the Sixties and Seventies, Sasha dolls have remarkable appeal today.

Presentation copies of The Bostonians and a volume containing the first bookform appearance of The Turn of the Screw were among the highlights of a large Henry James collection offered in almost 50 lots as part of a Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium) sale.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

MADAM – Re: the British Art Market Federation (BAMF) proposal for exempting ‘museum-quality ivory’ from any ban (ATG No 2324), where does that leave us?

Cyber security is among the biggest concerns for dealers and auctioneers, according to the latest ATG survey.

The studio ceramics offered at the Mallams Oxford (20% buyer’s premium) Design, Modern British and Post-War Art sale were the major talking point (see ATG No 2324), but furniture by major late 19th century and early 20th century makers also made an impact.

Possibly the first autograph manuscript of a complete work by Bela Bartok ever seen at auction, a working manuscript for the complete score of the original version of his Second Rhapsody for Violin and Piano (BB96) was bid to £250,000 in a music sale held by Sotheby’s (25/20/12.9% buyer’s premium).

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Brussels gears up for its major art and antiques fair this month with the latest edition of BRAFA.

Second World War technology starred at Tennants’ (20% buyer’s premium) militaria sale at Leyburn.

Illustrated here are two of the 20 hand-coloured litho plates, many showing the Crystal Palace in the background and each with a rhyming couplet below, that make up Blondin’s Marvellous Feats.

Antiquities is one of BRAFA’s strong suits in terms of exhibitor volume. Around 10 specialists in this field are standing, plus a number of others that mix antiquities with, for example, Asian art.

The winner - our congratulations and a magnum of champagne goes to Marc Oxley from Oakham.

A gentleman retires to his designated smoker’s chair, picks up his meerschaum pipe and Dunhill lighter and puffs away contentedly by his hearth… a vanished scenario in the UK today but recreated in the antiques world in these three items from December auctions.

Used as the catalogue cover design for an Illustration Art sale held by Swann (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) of New York was the George Lepape watercolour, ‘Après la Tempeste’ shown below.

The picture dealer element of BRAFA is substantial, but increasingly these days the emphasis is on works from the 19th century onwards, be they Impressionist and modern or post-war and contemporary art.

Work from 1880 returns to where it was made after it was offered at nearby antiques fair...

BRAFA has long been a fair with a speciality in early (medieval and Renaissance) works of art, which is something that dates back to the years when it was a Belgian National fair in the city centre. It thus serves a venerable collecting tradition drawing in buyers from the local area and further afield.