News

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: 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.

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.

UK: AN appeal is likely this week against a council’s decision to enforce the return of nine paintings sold in the major dispersal at Noseley Hall in Leicestershire at the end of last September.

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.

UK: IT may have been a touch risky for Phillips (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) to illustrate a dodo on the front cover of a catalogue for the sale of 19th and 20th century design in Edinburgh on May 21, but thankfully for the auctioneers it proved to be anything but a dead duck when it came to the bidding.