News

ANTIQUES dealers are being warned against using unfamiliar courier companies that they find through web directories.

A VOLUNTEER at the Royal Signals Regiment Museum in Blandford, Dorset, has been jailed for 12 months for stealing £33,000 of medals and selling them on eBay.

The collection of national treasure, writer and poet, jazz musician and eco-warrior, but most memorably of all, the Goon and tormented comic genius that was Spike Milligan, brought strong bidding at Bonhams on November 25.

FOUND hanging in a Boston bathroom, the whereabouts of this Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) illustration had been a mystery for more than 80 years. Entitled The Climax, and hanging in the lavatory alongside another Beardsley pen-and-ink drawing called A Platonic Lament, the owners had no idea of its significance.

AT the close of this month's Winter Fine Art & Antiques Fair at Olympia there was no doubt that the worldwide banking crisis and now the recession had taken their toll.

TWO of the West Country’s foremost fine art auctioneers, Bearne’s and Hampton & Littlewood, are to merge to become the biggest business of its kind in the South West.

THIS imposing but relatively plain 5ft 6in (1.69m) wide mahogany centre pedestal desk c.1760 was a last-minute entry to Addison's of Barnards Castle fine art and antiques sale on November 15.