News

Princess Michael of Kent returned to Sworders 10 years after she had opened the Essex firm's new saleroom for an auction preview this week.

Parents will now be shelling out hundreds of pounds as kids fill up football World Cup sticker albums and negotiate playground swaps in a now time-honoured fashion. Back in the mid-19th century the photo collecting craze was all about the carte de visite, as a May 3 auction underlines.

An exceptionally rare Western Zhou bronze, taken when the Summer Palace was sacked by British troops in 1860, has sold for £410,000, four times its lower estimate.

Art and antiques exports from the UK continued to fall in 2017, recording a decline of 2.2% to £4.84bn, according to UK trade figures from HMRC. At the same time, there were areas of significant growth, including exports to China which rose by 350% to £115.9m in 2017.

A handwritten manuscript of a Sherlock Holmes story featuring a cipher devised by author Arthur Conan Doyle goes under the hammer this month in Dallas, Texas.

Nancy Mitford was so enamoured with a particular bed that she wrote about it lovingly in the 1950s.

A look at the latest moves in the trade.