News

A group of British silversmiths, jewellery retailers and manufacturers has launched a campaign against the ‘outsourcing’ of UK hallmarks overseas.

A series of Old Master drawings from the collection of Brian Sewell have had their attributions upgraded in advance of the auction of the late art critic’s collection in London next month. They include two long-unattributed works that have now been ascribed to named 16th century Italian artists.

When in the middle of the century Suffolk collector Hugh Marsham Townshend (1878-1967) was amassing a collection of gold-mounted porcelain scent bottles and other trinkets, most were thought to be the products of the Chelsea porcelain works or a shadowy enterprise known as the ‘Girl in a Swing’ factory.

The release of the catalogue for the upcoming sale of the Reagans’ private collection reveals the President’s artistic flair and the First Lady’s taste for diamonds.

An auction of a Thracian coin – minted in the city of Apollonia Pontica (in modern-day Bulgaria) in the 4th or 5th century BC – was halted by eBay on the grounds the listing was ‘hateful or discriminatory’.

The first lot at AntiquarianAuctions.com’s August sale is a collection of calotypes taken by Maxime du Camp that were used in one of the first books of travel photography ever published.

A painting by Irish artist Jack B Yeats owned by the late David Bowie will be offered at Sotheby’s in November.