UK

To collectors of the so-called castle-top card cases, subject matter is everything. Pictured here is a great rarity.

RICS agree to credit new courseKINGSTON University have announced plans to introduce an MA in Arts Market Appraisal in September.

Surrey auctioneers Ewbank are now offering a live online bidding service and held their first such sale on July 7.

Medieval French silver is not a plentiful commodity. Much of it did not escape the great post-Revolutionary meltdown, but one piece that got away was the late Gothic reliquary casket that featured in Sotheby’s works of art auction in London on June 8.

Few will be unaware that 2005 is the bicentenary of Nelson’s death at the Battle of Trafalgar, given the number of celebrations and exhibitions commemorating the event.

DOUBTLESS unique, but in its way typical of the sort of success enjoyed at Robert Finan’s sale, was this Russian 18th century emerald, ruby and diamond cross, right, mounted in silver and gold.

LIKE so much material where the name is so much part of the game, the exquisite objets d’art fashioned in the Russian workshops of Carl Fabergé have attracted copyists, repro-producers and outright forgers.

Nantwich, Cheshire auctioneers Peter Wilson have completed work to a new entrance hall, right.

September will see the end of an era and a Kensington Church Street landmark when John Jesse, the pioneering decorative arts dealer, shuts up shop following the expiration of his lease.

Never was an event more aptly named than Brian and Anna Haughton’s International Ceramics Fair and Seminar, the veteran ceramics fest which celebrated its 24th staging from June 16-19.

As celebrations abound for the most famous of all seamen, another great British admiral was being remembered in spectacular fashion at the Nottingham auction rooms of Mellors & Kirk on June 16. The subject of a fierce engagement between collectors was the so-called Rodney Jug.

THIEVES escaped with £10,000 worth of furniture and antiques in a raid on a dealer in Staffordshire.

English folk art with an American accent. Not only did the pair of child portraits seen at the Athenaeum in Bury St Edmunds on June 15 represent charming examples of early 19th century folk art, they also carried the name of an artist who would move to America shortly after they were painted.

IT was just three weeks into the First World War when British destroyers engaged the enemy off the Heligoland Bight near Denmark.

A student has discovered a five-volume inventory of the possessions of Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, while cataloguing in the National Archives at Kew.

London turned up the heat in the market for Contemporary art when both Sotheby’s and Christie’s achieved outstanding results at their June evening sales.

The July sales of Asian art will be notable for bringing two newly discovered pieces to the market, one in London and the other in Salisbury.

Horners Auctioneers in Acle, near Norwich lost half the lots for their auction when thieves broke in the night before the sale.

In the centre of Lincoln stands the Westgate Water Tower, built between 1905 and 1911 to provide the city with clean drinking water, but also as a permanent reminder of the major typhoid epidemic that hit the city between November 1904 and April 1905.

Moorcroft miniatures are a collecting field in their own right. Anyone who owns a copy of Paul Atterbury’s book Moorcroft will be aware from the sleeve illustration just how many of the factory patterns were produced in miniature, often requiring an extra delicacy of touch on the part of the designer, potter and decorator.