London

Fine art dealer Daniel Hunt has launched an auction business opposite his former dealership in Sloane Street.

A Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund sword of £100 value took the honours at a Bonhams’ (27.5/25/20/14.5% buyer’s premium) sale of arms and armour.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Offered at Sotheby’s (26/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) in an online sale that ran until December 1 under the title of The Fantasy World of Arthur Rackham was a collection of 31 original ink and watercolour artworks by the artist from the collection of American photographer Shirley Carter Burden (1908-89).

Leslie Fleischman runs Vintage Watch Room London, which specialises in 20th century watches marketed as ‘both affordable and stylish’.

The most unusual armour lot to emerge in recent sales was the late 16th century German brass parade cuirass which made £86,000 at Thomas Del Mar (20% buyer’s premium) in London on December 8.

Superb set of the Dickens classic was painstakingly assembled as originally issued

The first half of a single-owner collection of more than 100 works by British studio potter Waistel Cooper (1921-2003) is on offer at the Fine Art Society.

Indian talismanic shirts or Qur’an jama were believed to carry protective powers.

Grand Canal sketch has provenance to artist’s student who became a renowned collector

Perhaps the most identifiable production of the Daoguang period (1820-50) of the Qing empire is the medallion bowl.

Bezoars (from the Persian pād-zahr meaning ‘poison antidote’) are the calcified concretion found in the stomachs of some animals. Prized for their supposed medicinal properties, until the Enlightenment science at the beginning of the 18th century they could sell for more than their weight in gold.

Leading a recent Woolley & Wallis' (25/12% buyer’s premium) sale in Salisbury were two scroll paintings by well-known 20th century Chinese artists that came by descent from Field Marshal Archibald Percival Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell (1883-1950).

Dovehouse Fine Antiques Fairs’ organiser Jane Alexander says that her long-planned Little Chelsea Decorative Arts and Antiques Fair at Chelsea Old Town Hall is on hold for the time being.

There are only three other known examples of this early David Hockney (b.1937) etching titled 'Self-Portrait (not in S.A.C. or Tokyo)'.

Gallery hopes single-owner collection shows will boost profile of a prodigious talent

Qianlong moon flasks of this type are based on Ming dynasty prototypes that in turn were inspired by early Persian drinking vessels traded along the Silk Road.

After 48 years dealing from a shop on New Kings Road in Fulham, dealer John Clay is closing his doors.