UK

Executed in the 1890s, when Beatrix Potter was working for the greetings card firm Hildesheimer, this little ink and watercolour drawing was last seen at auction in London about ten year ago, but on December 1 it came back to Christie’s South Kensington and sold for £25,000.

A Christie’s South Kensington sports sale of November 23 saw a bid of £5500 on a programme for the 1897 F.A. Cup Final at Crystal Palace in which Aston Villa completed a League and Cup double by beating Everton 3-2.

ESTABLISHED in 1976, the annual West London Antiques Fair is traditionally the first quality fair of the year and a sure sign that the trade is well and truly back in harness after the seasonal break.

THE last of the four annual selling shows of Japanese woodblock prints at The Japanese Gallery, 66D Kensington Church Street, London W8, is Cats, Birds and Flowers which opened earlier this month and continues until February 28, 2005.

NOTED Manchester horologists Northern Clocks, run by Robert Love and his daughter Mary Anne, always have more than 100 good, craftsman-restored clocks in stock at Boothsbank Farm, Leigh Road, Worsley, but you can also see what they have on offer in their just published 2005 catalogue.

Christie’s King Street (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) were pulling out all the stops for their first full week of the month.

Halls (15% buyer’s premium) "It was quite a rare object, in good working order and sang beautifully.”

SOLD at £42,000 to a collector in a November 30 sale of Continental books and manuscripts held by Sotheby’s was a 1566 Lyon edition of Celsus’ De re medica from the library of France’s ‘Prince of Poets’, Pierre de Ronsard. Autograph material by de Ronsard is of the utmost rarity, with just two documents entirely in his hand recorded (both in the Bibliothèque Nationale) and ony two or three volumes bearing his signature, as this one does, remaining in private hands.

FIRST printed by Berthelet in 1531, Thomas Elyot’s The Boke named the Govenor, a treatise on the education of statesmen that was dedicated to Henry VIII and found great favour at court, has been described as “not only the earliest treatise on moral philosophy in English but the first of an imposing array which introduced into England the cultural and political ideals of the renaissance”.

MINDFUL of how demand at many sales is polarised between the ‘best and the rest’, Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) decided to tackle this prevalent attitude head on with a new type of sale.

CARMARTHEN’S own Towy Antiques Fairs ended the year on a high note with good sales across the board at their Christmas Carmarthen Antiques & Collectors’ Fair, held at the local showground on December 11 and 12.

Thos. Wm. Gaze & Son (10% buyer’s premium)At 13in (33cm) high this really is a very good-sized example of William Moorcroft’s celebrated Hazeldene design.

Is there a Christmas factor in the auction rooms? Cheffins auctioneer Jonathan Law (Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent) believes that the season may have some effect in putting a little pressure on people to buy rather than wait.

CONSOLIDATING his comeback, Reg Cooper, who now operates as Caminade Antiques Fairs, encountered a bit of old-fashioned fair wars skulduggery at his second Oxfordshire Antiques Fair, held from December 10 to 12 at Heythrop Park.

Autographs, manuscripts and printed ephemera have long been a great strength of sales at Strides of Chichester, but the December 3 sale was rather special, being devoted entirely to that field and, though not billed as such, the first part of the personal collection of Derek White, who for many years has catalogued for the Sussex saleroom.

Richard Winterton (15% buyer’s premium)Trained by Tom Coulthwaite, who schooled a number of high-class jumpers in the first decades of the 20th century, Irish-bred Eremon was one of the top chasers of his era. And 1907 was very much his year.

Complete with its original bill of sale and warranty, this fine 18ct gold chronograph minute repeater pocket watch made by London maker J.W. Benson sold into the trade for £3100 at John Taylor’s (12% buyer’s premium) of Louth on December 7.

The Victoria and Albert Museum have updated security following a second theft from their Ceramic Galleries in as many months. While the new systems were installed, the galleries were closed for a week.

“Business has been good, but to achieve this I have had to work extremely hard.” This is how Chris Beetles summed up 2004 and, having already taken over £500,000 in sales from his renowned annual exhibition of British illustrators, he is ending the year on a bullish note.

With TEFAF Maastricht beckoning, it was hardly surprising that Dutch and Flemish painting should capture most of major prices at the December round of Old Master paintings sales in London.