UK

There was high excitement at The Auction Centre, Leyburn on March 30 when Sean Keating’s Ulysses off Connemara shot to a remarkable £400,000 (plus 15/10 per cent premium), a record for the artist and a house record for Tennants.

After a year-long fund-raising effort, The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has just secured the future of its most impressive Chelsea porcelain exhibit.

Only five Mayfair dealers will participate in this year’s London Sculpture Week (June 14-22), the smallest number since the initiative was launched in 2004.

THE 14th century Penshurst Place with its walled garden is the ancestral home of the Sidney family and is still in the family’s ownership.

High Court turns down Iran’s bid to enforce its own penal law in UK in attempt to claim artefacts

Dreweatt Neate Neales in Nottingham will hold the first of a series of sales for Oxfam on April 19. Recent visitors to the charity’s website or one of its network of 750 high street shops may have noticed the launch of ‘Valued at Oxfam’.

THE leading dealer associations have drawn up guidelines to clarify the position on how the artists’ resale levy applies to sales of prints.

Cambridge auctioneers Cheffins are to offer a recently rediscovered archive of slides that depict the daredevil Malcolm Campbell in his pomp.

The highlight of the English and Continental furniture and objects sale conducted Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh on March 21 was this walnut, rosewood veneered, satinwood crossbanded and parcel gilt side table c.1805.

Halls auctioneer Jeremy Lamond expected the relaunch of his Shrewsbury saleroom to be the biggest challenge of the month. But a small box of antiques consigned for sale soon changed that.

“WE’VE got 1700 exhibitors at our March fair at the East of England Showground and we’ve been fully booked for six weeks now, with 1100 stallholders inside three large halls – including the Cambridge Suite with fine quality pieces – and marquees, and 600 dealers outside,” said Chris Hart of Bob Evans Fairs , the organiser of the twice-yearly Peterborough Festival of Antiques.

Photo-london, the four-year-old specialist photograph fair that takes place annually in May, has a new owner, a new venue and a new slant.

SPECIAL FOCUS: ST ALBANS ANTIQUES CENTREST ALBANS’ last remaining shop selling antiques may be forced out of business if a planning application for its change of use to a restaurant is approved.

On March 6, amid a scrum of journalists and anoraks, Bonhams sold the Angels collection of stage and screen costume including Obi Wan Kenobi’s hooded cloak from the original Star Wars film, knocked down below expectations at £45,000.

SIR Harry Newton (1871-1951), whose library provided some of the finest things in a £730,000 book sale held by Duke’s of Dorchester on March 8, was an adherent of the old ‘Cabinet’ school of collecting – buying key works of literature and science.

FOR the third successive year, dealers from the UK’s two major antiquarian bookselling organisations, ABA and PBFA have combined forces at the Edinburgh Book Fair which this year takes place on March 23 and 24 in Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms.

Renowned Tudor historian and TV personality Dr David Starkey has discovered what is almost certainly the first and only known surviving portrait of Lady Jane Grey to be painted in her lifetime.

THE London trade can breathe a sigh of relief. The British Art Market Federation (BAMF) have won their battle to stop a new Government Bill introducing draconian measures to regulate the capital’s dealers and auction houses.

The majolica market may have cooled a little since the white hot days of the 1990s but rarities still have the capacity to command imposing sums at auction.

Lure of top-end art proves too tempting