UK

Laws relating to antique firearms and bladed weapons are set to change in the UK this year. Dealers, auctioneers and collectors will be affected by both the offensive weapons bill and an amendment to the Policing and Crime Act 2017 which are set to become law in 2019.

Pictured here are three pieces from the Pelham Olive collection sold by Bonhams on January 31. Two are early English delft and are prize examples because they are inscribed and dated. The third is an example of Staffordshire slipware.

Billed as a private London collection, the February 5 sale at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) betrayed a single owner with a good eye and wide-ranging enthusiasms.

The best Egyptian antiquities now engender much more than mere scholastic fervour but, for the most part, humbler objects remain eminently affordable.

Two single-owner collections built up over lifetimes were well received at Canterbury Auction Galleries (20% buyer’s premium) on February 5-6.

Good times at the Oxford rooms of Mallams (20% buyer’s premium), when all bar one of 56 clocks got away almost all going comfortably above estimates.

Late 18th-century works for children combine juvenile diversion with moral instruction.

A dealer's one-day London show comes hot on the heels of major exhibitions that are drumming up interest in miniatures.

Out-sold by the 100-times estimate £22,000 Japanese vase featured on last week’s News pages (ATG No 2380), this gold and silver-gilt chalice, right, offered at Lytham St Annes auction house Gerrards (18% buyer’s premium) on February 7 was a more predictable five-figure star.

Letters on the sails of the vessels seen on the title-page of Pedro de Syria’s Arte de la Verdadera Navegacion, published in Valencia in 1602, are a reminder that it was Columbus’ voyage in Spanish service just over a hundred years earlier that led to the ‘discovery’ of the Americas.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Dealer Philip Mould stages 'Jewel in the Hand: Early Portrait Miniatures from Noble and Private Collections' at its Pall Mall gallery from March 12-April 18.

Catalogued as the most valuable Silver Age comic book by far, a copy of Issue No 15 of Amazing Fantasy, the 1962 comic that saw the first appearance of Spider-Man, sold for £14,500 in a January 25 sale held by Excalibur Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) of Amersham.

Chichester dealer Rob Shaw is a regular stallholder in the George Stephenson building at IACF Newark. He is a general dealer in antiques but specialises in Chinese works of art.

Three lots selling for multi-estimate sums at regional auctions in the UK including a Staffordshire slipware honey pot from c.1700 that drew demand at Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury.

An untitled photograph of a horse race is among the wide selection of photographs on offer from Michael Hoppen Gallery’s exhibition Simply the Best featuring works of 20th century sports photographer Gerry Cranham (b.1928).

A rare Georgian invalid’s ‘chair lift’ is one of the highlights at the Scone Palace Antiques & Fine Art Fair.

Lamps in south London form a stylish and popular part of the mid-century collecting field.