UK

The UK’s complex art-lending scene is a pale shadow of its US counterpart. However, a new law could change all that – if loans against art works can be registered.

A rare early photographic instrument – bought for a song by a member of the BBC’s Antiques Road Trip team – sold for £20,000 at Lacy Scott & Knight (17.5% buyer’s premium) in Bury St Edmunds on May 13.

An online platform for trading shares in artworks could become a reality if a new company manages to meet its fundraising target.

Next month’s 'London International Antiquarian Book Fair' at the National Hall, Olympia on June 1-3 will be the last held at the West Kensington venue.

Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst is well known for its Garden Statuary and Natural History sales. Now it is adding a new category to the portfolio.

The London International Premier Fair (June 2-3) is the flagship book fair of the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA).

Duke’s of Dorchester posted the top regional Asian art price of the season on May 18 when Wu Guanzhong’s (1919-2010) scroll painting White Birches on Mount Chang Bai (Zhangbai) sold at £500,000 (plus buyer’s premium).

In the continuing series looking through the keyhole of ‘bricks and mortar’ shops in 2017, ATG talks to Robert Frost, who runs Martlesham Antiques from a thatched cottage in Suffolk. It specialises in 18th and 19th century furniture.

Early Dutch discoveries in Australia and those made in Tasmania and New Zealand on Abel Tasman’s first voyage are outlined in a 1659 wall-map by the Amsterdam cartographer Joan Blaeu (1596-1673).

The late Hubert Dingwall began a lifetime of book collecting in 1935 with the purchase of a vellum bound copy of the second part only of a 1697 Antwerp edition of Don Quixote for one shilling and sixpence.

Three substantial sales from Edinburgh to Exeter via Doncaster last month confirmed the promise of early spring with the staple areas of furniture, silver and ceramics holding up and, for named or specialist-interest material, doing well. The figures underline the overall buoyancy.

The big surprise at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood'’s April 11-12 sale at Exeter was this 17th-18th century Tyrolean wood and gilt crucifix.

Cooper Events’ next outing is The Pavilions of Harrogate Antiques & Fine Art Fair in North Yorkshire, from June 2-4.

The Conservative Party has omitted any mention of ivory in its 2017 manifesto published last week, giving hope an uncompromising ban on the trade will not be introduced.

Made by Paul Storr, highly decorative and from the family collection of the late Sir Nicholas Harington, this 1836 piece of silver had the name, the look and the provenance to overcome the somewhat unfashionable nature of inkstands.

Coming up next at The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh is the exhibition Between Tides: Scotland’s Working Culture of the Sea.

John Minton’s 1940 painting 'Landscape with Figures' is among the pieces included in Osborne Samuel’s exhibition 'The Romantic Impulse: British Neo-Romantic Artists at Home & Abroad 1935-1959'.

If you don’t know which epic film opens with the phrase ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….’ then you may just be living on a different planet.