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FEW clocks can claim to be as rare as this example, pictured right, which is being offered for sale at Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchet in Essex on October 23. The rarity is based in part on the maker’s misfortune.

Staff briefed on avoiding conflicts of interest. Sotheby's have sent out a memo to leading members of the trade involved with fairs at Olympia to explain how they will support exhibitors.

Manufacturing expertise and a fondness for the hard stuff are notable traits among Scottish folk, and they were well married in this miniature copper whisky still, pictured, offered by Glasgow auctioneers McTear’s (10 per cent buyer’s premium) on September 11.

There were few plate books in this year’s Arts of India sale at Christie’s, held on September 27, but one notable result was provided by Emily Eden’s Portraits of the Princes & Peoples of India, published by J. Dickinson in 1844.

While classic silver chugs along at prices scarcely unchanged since the ’70s boom, novelty pieces provide the market with a buoyant area. The 90-lot silver section offered at Crewkerne on September 13 by Lawrences (15% buyer’s premium) saw only nine fail to get away and no casualties among the novelty pieces from abroad.

Reports of an unusually quiet time in London made auctioneer Marc Burridge of Clevedon Salerooms anxious about how business would fare in Bristol but his fears were unrealised with bidders reacting positively to a “good, clean, honest sale” on 20 September.

Nephew of the influential Amsterdam-based painting teacher Petrus Franciscus Greive (1811-1872), Johan Conrad Greive (1837-1891) was a modestly-talented 19th century Dutch artist who specialised in river and canal scenes often with numerous figures.