UK

In the 1950s French designer Raymond Cohen and his firm Cohray were producing a range of ultra-modern furniture that – although made for the machine age – were all put together by hand.

A rare 19th century pearlware horse is available to buyers visiting BADA’s inaugural staging of the BADA Collection at 46 Pimlico Road this summer.

An artwork painted with oil and sand is among the offerings at the inaugural Fair for Saatchi.

A festival of rugs and textiles organised by HALI magazine joins the busy line-up of London events this summer.

The resurgent interest in quality Japanese material and the slower revival of English furniture were both evident in a cabinet on stand sold at West Sussex auction house Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium).

Bearing a thumbprint on the title-page – along with a note by a secretary, Susan Macey, witnessing it as genuine – a 1988 UK edition of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief of History of Time… was estimated at £200-400 but sold for £3000 in a May 30 sale.

Among stand-out exhibitions in the well-represented area of works on paper at this year’s London Art Week (LAW) is a collection of drawings by the German artist Adolph Menzel (1815-1905).

While fairs remain a vital part of the art market calendar, the rich series of gallery selling exhibitions in Mayfair and St James’s this summer offer more chances to view and buy – at a different pace.

For close to three centuries buyers of art and antiques have been spoilt for choice in London. A city synonymous with archives, galleries, museums, conservators and curators, it continues to support long-standing streets of antiques dealers, centres and a plethora of regular fairs and markets. As this guide to the hotspots suggests, most of them are complementary rather than in competition, and all budgets are catered for.

As the battle for the ‘middle market’ heats up, the London auction scene today offers visitors a wider choice of items to buy and more places to bid for them.

For the British art and antiques trade, the summer ‘season’ still carries plenty of resonance, particularly in London. The days of rowing club colours at Henley and Georgian walnut at the Grosvenor House Hotel have given way to the plethora of June and July showpiece auctions and a clutch of fairs and dealer-led events – London Art Week, Olympia, Masterpiece London, and new kid on the block Fair For Saatchi.

Britain still has many ‘antiques’ towns and streets – those picturesque corners of the island populated by shops, galleries and centres that together act as a magnet for antiques tourists. Two of the largest communities of dealers close to London are Petworth and Hungerford, while a busy schedule of regular fairs and markets takes place to the south-west of London.

Housed in a remarkable purpose-built marquee, Masterpiece London returns to the grounds of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea for its tenth anniversary

The International Antiques & Collectors Fair (IACF) has added the Peterborough Festival of Antiques to its extensive portfolio.

Two studies by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones for his 1868 oil Hymenaeus will soon be reunited with the finished painting.