News

LESS than two months remains to find the final £116,057 towards the £1.4m price of a unique portrait of the 17th century poet John Donne.

SOTHEBY’s have hit back at claims that investors are losing confidence in the art market despite the company’s biggest shareholder selling their entire stake.

It gives some idea as to how furniture connoisseurship has changed that the upholstered high-back chair pictured here could once have been accepted as an original furnishing from the bedroom of Mary Queen of Scots.

All Bank of England banknotes issued prior to the early 1800s are rare but the note, pictured here, dated 30 August 1705, is believed to be the oldest in private hands.

THE Office of Fair Trading are to conduct a survey of internet shopping habits and will report their findings next spring.

Long-time Kent auctioneer Mervyn Carey is to retire after more than four decades in the business. He held his last sale at the church hall in Tenterden last Wednesday.

EBAY have posted first quarter net revenues of $1.39bn, just over predictions and 35 per cent up on the first quarter of 2005.