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UK: PICTURED here is one of the best examples of English cameo glass to go under the hammer for many years.

UK: ONE OF THE curious features of the English class system was the availability of similar sporting pastimes to all men by their birthright. Royalty played real tennis, for instance, while impecunious prisoners, it seems, made do with rackets.

UK: ONE of the bargains of the year must be the British Library’s purchase of the Letters of the Earl of Essex to Elizabeth I, which sold at Phillips on June 11 for a low-estimate £150,000 plus premium.

UK: TONY BANKS MP and former ministers Kenneth Baker and Peter Brooke were among those registering their interests at a sale of political commemoratives held by Special Auction Services on June 13 at the Courtyard Hotel, Padworth.

FRANCE: AFTER YEARS of apparent indifference, the French Government appears to be preparing for a last-minute stand against art import VAT.

THE race for auction supremacy on the Internet took yet another turn last week when Sotheby’s announced a long term alliance with the best known name in e-commerce, amazon.com.

UK: LOCKED bill to bill on the five vellum rolls or membranes shown above, the longest of them stretching to 34in (86cm), are no fewer than 99 swan heads showing the different mandible marks used by ‘gamesters’ on the East Anglian Broadlands.

UK: A RULING which could lift the ban on the sale of some listed artefacts and set a precedent for other cases is expected from the Department of the Environment within weeks.

PHILLIPS have announced the appointment of Mark O. Howald as managing director of Phillips-Selkirk in St Louis as of May 1, 1999.

UK: A DEALER’S £25 purchase at an antiques fair is likely to bring him a substantial windfall after being identified as a rare copper etching plate by Lucas van Leyden, the 16th century Old Master.

UK: TWO rather remarkable pieces of British heritage met rather different reactions at the Billingshurst statuary and architectural items although both went to the same bidder – a private Middle Eastern buyer.

UK: THE WEEK before Harry Lyons of New Century opened his exhibition of Dresser at Kensington Church Street, the Leicester rooms of Warner Auctions sold this gilt-lined ebonised side table attributed to Christopher Dresser.

GERMANY: IN another fortnight of rapid developments in e-commerce, Artnet.com, specialist fine art service provider on the Internet, went public on May 17 when it offered shares in its parent company, artnet.com AG, on Frankfurt’s Neuer Markt stock exchange.

UK: ROBERT Gatling presented his rapid fire gun to the killing fields of the American Civil War – sparking a race between rival generals, statesmen and technicians to develop an automatic weapon with the capacity for achieving the most kills in the shortest time.

FRANCE: THE FRENCH government’s apparent disregard for their art market, reflected by the repeated postponement of the auction reform (see above), was further illustrated by the dramatic last-minute cancellation of the sale of the contents of the former royal château at Randan in the Auvergne.

US: IF UK dealers need a reminder as to why their American counterparts are frantically plundering these shores for fine English examples of their own 18th century copies, then they should look no further than the premium inclusive $336,000 (£213,000) paid by an American private collector for this Queen Anne-style Philadelphia walnut side chair at Freeman’s of Philadelphia on April 16.

UK: THE Art and Antiques Helpline, a seven-day-a-week service which will give access to one of the most comprehensive databases of stolen art and antiques, is to come into operation this summer.

FRANCE: A NEW date of June 10 has been set for the first parliamentary reading of the long-delayed bill reforming French auction system.

UK: A WORCESTER porcelain wine funnel c.1770 – of a particularly large size at 51/2in (14cm) high – printed in underglaze blue with butterflies and sprays of flowers.

US: THE bonanza of Impressionist and 19th century art sales in New York, headlined by the record $55m (£33.5m) hammer price paid for a Cézanne still life, has highlighted various trends in the market, not least the dominance of Post Impressionist works.