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Windsor Chairs: An Illustrated Handbook by Wallace Nutting published by Dover Publications Inc. NY ($14.95) and distributed in the UK by David & Charles Ltd of Newton Abbot. ISBN 0486417255 £15.70

A Study Collection of Marked Domestic Brass and other Base Metalware c.1600-1900, a catalogue compiled by Roderick and Valentine Butler, Neil Bollen and Dr Christopher Green. Price £26 inc. p&p UK, £30 inc p&p US. Contact Roderick and Valentine Butler on 01404 42169 to order copies.

As every silver dealer knows, the value of standard Victorian three-piece tea sets has gone down, not up, over the past decade. But introduce a fashionable style to the casting, and the price will inevitably soar.

WHILE it was worrying that Phillips’ main Midlands saleroom could find only 100 furniture lots worthy of their main autumn sale, and that only five of those took more than £3000, such is the drought of quality goods in the provinces at the moment that the trade were determined to make the best of any opportunity.

TEFAF, the European Fine Art Foundation, who organise the Maastricht fair, have commissioned a detailed new study on the state of the European art market.

Even without the worldwide crises of the last two months, the market for Islamic works of art has always been volatile, subject to price polarisation and a degree of selectiveness.

Two rather different toy sales went under the hammer early last month. October 4 saw Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) put some 465 lots predominantly devoted to dolls under the hammer while six days later Bonhams & Brooks (15/10% buyer’s premium) offered an even bigger, more general 630-lot mix of playthings ranging from Dinkys and lead figures to dolls, soft toys and tinplate.