News

Christie’s reported auction sales for the first half of 2014 of $3.6bn (£2.2bn), a 23% rise on the same period last year. Sotheby’s took $3.12bn (£1.9bn), a 22% increase.

The Art Fund have launched a new crowdfunding scheme to help museums and galleries, the first of which should also help boost the art and antiques trade around Hastings.

The most historically interesting entry in Bonhams’ clock sale held in their New Bond Street rooms came from the ten-lot section devoted to marine chronometers.

Born near Loughborough into a family of tenant farmers, Robert Bakewell (1725-95) is recognised as an important figure in the Agricultural Revolution – a pioneer of the grassland irrigation he saw while travelling in Europe and an innovator in the selective breeding of livestock.

Among the most desirable of all needlework samplers are those associated with pupils at the Ackworth School, founded as a co-educational boarding school in 1779 by the Quaker physician John Fothergill and still thriving today.

Twenty lots comprising works by Anglo-Italian artist Fortunino Matania will be offered at the upcoming fine art sale being held by Tennants of Leyburn, North Yorkshire.

In the wake of calls for the destruction of antique ivory, The Metropolitan Police Wildlife Crime Unit is asking Londoners to bring in ‘family heirlooms’ made from elephant ivory and other endangered species.