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CHANCELLOR Gordon Brown’s Budget plans to help achieve one of the three main aims of the National Art Collections Fund (the Art Fund) campaign to improve art donation. Concern that art owners do not have enough incentive to bequeath works to the nation has led the Chancellor to announce that he will look at introducing a policy of tax relief on such donations – until now, such relief has only been available on donations of cash or shares.

A JUNE 3 New York court hearing will rule whether Sotheby’s and Christie’s should pay $40m compensation to clients who bought and sold at their auctions outside the US during the 1990s.

THE British Antiques and Collectables Awards have come round again, with judges from across the trade and auctioneering profession singling out the cream of their colleagues for praise.

Looking after Antiques by Frances Halahan and Anna Plowden, published by National Trust Enterprises Ltd. ISBN 0707802865 £35hb

FOR the fourth year the Oxfordshire specialist in sporting antiques Manfred Schotten and the London picture dealer Nick Potter have got together for a selling exhibition of golfing art and memorabilia, but for the first time this year the show, which runs until April 17, will be held at Mr Schotten’s shop in Burford.

“AS extreme as always with focused bidding on the key lots,” was Victorian specialist Grant Ford’s frank description of the selective response to Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) mid-season British Sale at Bond Street.

Topographical views of Valetta Harbour, Malta, continue to be one of the most solid performers in the salerooms. The latest quality example to turn up in the provinces was this signed Girolamo Gianni (1837-1887) oil on card, right, offered at the Chichester rooms of Stride’s (15% buyer’s premium) on February 28 with an estimate of £4000-6000.

THIS Saturday sale was one of the series of dolls and toys specialist events extending the West Yorkshire auctioneers’ Andrew Harley's reputation in the niche market beyond the more frequent antiques events.

IT’S not often that Britain recovers a highly important work from the United States – most of the traffic is usually the other way. However, Norfolk Museums Service are celebrating silver dealer Christopher Hartop’s triumph in negotiating the return of Sir Robert Walpole’s sterling silver tureen, which has now been put on show in the silver gallery at Norwich Castle.

David Leach – 20th Century Ceramics by Emmanuel Cooper and Kathy Niblett, published by Richard Dennis Publications. ISBN 903685884 £25hb ISBN 0903685892 £20sb

Auctioneer Neil Freeman said that he could not remember a high price for multiple cased fish during his 20 years’ experience in the market for antique piscatoria. This 5ft 10in by 4ft 11in (1.78 x 1.50m) cabinet was one of a pair containing 15 brown trout caught by the ninth Earl of Coventry during a fruitful fly-fishing holiday in Ireland in 1879.

Artists’ Textiles in Britain 1945-1970: A Democratic Art, by Geoffrey Rayner, Richard Chamberlain and Anne-Marie Stapleton, published by the Antique Collectors’ Club in association with the Fine Arts Society/Target Gallery. ISBN 1851494324 £19.95sb

EARLY needlework specialist Maureen Morris has been appointed to the Board of LAPADA. She joined the country’s largest dealers’ association in 1991 and is already a member of the advisory board of the Olympia Fine Art and Antique Fairs.

NEW YORK: EARLY sales at the exhibitions participating in New York’s Asia Week indicate that in this field at least business is very brisk indeed.

FELLOWS & Sons, the Birmingham-based firm of auctioneers and valuers, have started major expansion plans by opening a new 15,000 sq ft auction house in Great King Street, Hockley.

MAHOGANY is synonymous with the finest 18th century English furniture and its supreme place in English furniture history is celebrated from April 8 to 25 with a selling exhibition, Magnificent Mahogany – Two Centuries of English Furniture, at Mayfair’s Windsor House Antiques.

Coming up in Buckingham: A clockwork model of a V5 Citroën half-track – the first vehicle to cross the Sahara during the 1922 trans-Sahara expedition – is expected to make over £3000 when it is sold by Vectis, the Teesside auction house, in April.

Provenance, Provenance Provenance, this was the key to the runaway success of Sotheby’s 539-lot, £1.66m sale of items formerly owned by the famous engineer James Watt and his son James Watt Junior that had been carefully passed down through his family.

THE COVER of the catalogue issued by Cheffins for their Cambridge sale of March 19 made clever use of what I take to have been the coloured title of the 1794 French edition of Moses Harris L’Aurelien... that they sold for £4800. In rubbed red morocco gilt, this famous study of moths and butterflies was a large paper copy illustrated with 44 coloured plates, with text in French and English.

The death of Walter Moorcroft last year and the strong prices at Sotheby’s recent dispersal of the Wade collection have reinforced the popularity of this market, especially for the earlier Macintyre wares. A small collection at Bonham’s sale in Bury St Edmunds yielded the following results.