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Star billing at Christie’s King Street sale of selected English and Continental ceramics on December 6 went to three Meissen Augustus Rex covered baluster jars of 1740 with the AR monogram and Dreher’s marks XII to the base.

THE new year for Bloomsbury Auctions kicked off on January 14 with a general sale and opened with a selection of books on heraldry and genealogy from the estate of the late Michael Maclagan. Richmond Herald.

BOOKS, playbills and pictures from a collection formed by the late Gerald Tyler, an amateur actor and producer with the Leeds and Bradford Civic Theatres, founding chairman of the British Children’s Theatre Association and a man who was active in drama education, formed part of a January 8 sale held by Rowley Fine Art of Ely.

Two of the strongest performances in the December ceramics sales came from the glass sections offered at Bonhams Bond Street on December 8 and at Sotheby’s Olympia two weeks later.

Four antique clocks and two barometers were stolen in a raid on Chislehurst Antiques in Kent in late December.

A massive gulf exists between the very best quality Meiji period (1868-1912) works and the rest.

What makes a painting totally uncommercial one year and a sure-fire seller the next?Clearly, if there was a general principal of financial success to be learned in the art market there would be rather more dealers appearing in the media’s annual rich lists than there are now.

The Fine Art Auction Group have raised their buyer’s premium across their network of provincial salerooms.

The Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum have added two paintings by Joseph Southall (1861-1944) to their internationally recognised collection of British Arts & Crafts.

For the first time in its 19-year history, Atlantique City – New Jersey’s massive indoor antiques and collectables show – is going to allow shoppers through the Atlantic City Convention Center doors on a Friday.

British medals are realising ever higher prices and it seems that buyers almost invariably hail from these sceptred isles.

A new auction high for the Neapolitan Impressionist Vincenzo Irolli (1860-1949) was established by Sotheby’s (20-15.42% buyer’s premium, excluding VAT) last month in Milan when they offered this oil on canvas entitled La Pesca Fortunata (A good haul) in their sale of 19th century pictures on December 13.

Top Right: it may be badly damaged but this 4 1/2in (10.5cm) high Lowestoft blue and white teapot and cover is an exceptionally rare and documentary piece.

The Victoria and Albert Museum will open a new Portrait Miniatures Gallery on March 2.

SOME areas of the art market seem impervious to the changing winds of taste. One is quality pictures of great European cities by recognised artists which appeal across the usual boundaries of generations and national borders.

Formed by screenwriter and director Andrew Birkin during research for a trilogy of plays, The Lost Boys (first broadcast in 1978) and for his biography of J.M. Barrie, a 19-lot collection that tells the story of his friendship with the Llewelyn-Davies boys and the emergence of one of the best known characters in all of children’s literature, Peter Pan, attracted a great deal of media publicity before being put up for sale at Sotheby’s on December 16.

The last day of November saw a 633-lot sale at Spink (15% buyer’s premium). In all, this was a very successful sale; the failure rate being a negligible three per cent. The total was £415,486.

Christie’s are to modify their buyer’s premium structure to fall in line with their biggest rival.

Wallis & Wallis, Lewes. November 23. Buyer’s premium: 15 per centSales of arms and militaria can, with their beautifully chased old flintlocks and exuberantly decorated uniforms, somehow skate over the fact that often what is on offer is, or was, associated with the darker side of humanity.

ERICH Maria Remarque’s corrected galley proofs for the 1929, first bookform edition of Im Westen nichts Neues [All Quiet on the Western Front] brought a collector’s bid of £26,000 at Sotheby’s on November 30.