Brighton

Subject matter and rarity aside, a major concern for poster collectors is condition, as a group of First World War recruitment posters proved when sold at Brighton General Auctions.

The last general antiques shop in the historic Brighton Lanes area is to close later this month.

Home owners who have valuable antiques are being warned by police to be vigilant after three burglaries in the space of three days in the Brighton and Hove area.

BRIGHTON-based Geoff Rush runs Vinylman, the pomotions company which organises the Brighton Record Fair.

SOME provincial auctioneers and London’s major houses batten down their hatches during the traditionally dead month of August, but for Scarborough Perry (15% buyer's premium) it was business as usual for their August 12-13 sale.

AT Scarborough Perry Fine Arts' (15% buyer's premium) June 24-25 sale, auctioneer Stephen Perry, who had given a distressed Regency painted settee sofa a modest pre-sale estimate of £400, admitted ruefully after seeing it go for ten times that amount: “I can value furniture in general but I find it difficult to value interior decorator’s pieces.”

WHILE recent months have seen some softening in the majolica market as a whole, scarce pieces by good makers continue to attract bids close to those they did three or four years ago. Pictured right is one of George Jones’ best-known Stilton dish designs, modelled as a thatched bee skep on a rustic base of mottled greens and browns that also includes a registration lozenge for 1872.

A Prince’s Passion: The Life of the Royal Pavilion by Jessica Rutherford, published by the Royal Pavilion, Libraries & Museums. ISBN 0948723548 £14.99hb and available only from the Royal Pavilion shop in Brighton on 01273 292792. THIS is a delicious new history of Brighton’s Royal Pavilion, a monument of staggering self-indulgence built by George IV, the first son of the 15 children born to King George III and Queen Charlotte.

THE quality-guaranteeing stamp of London cabinet-makers and retailers Edwards & Roberts was the key to the top seller at the 890-lot March 25-26 sale at Scarborough Perry Fine Arts (15% buyer's premium) that totalled £89,000.

ANTIQUES shops come and go (and plenty have gone in recent years) but some seem to trade on forever. It is 100 years since this little girl was photographed outside the bookshop at 7-8 Union Street, Brighton, right, where Dermot and Jill Palmer are now preparing to mark their 35th anniversary dealing in antiques from the premises.