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UK: A LIBRARIAN who wrecked valuable books and sold them to a Cheltenham dealer and a London market stall faces jail after being convicted of theft.

Withers LLP, the international private client law firm, has launched a specialised legal service for clients concerned with cultural assets. The new service will be headed by Pierre Valentin, formerly legal counsel for Sotheby’s Europe, who has joined Withers.

HOUSE price gains have outstripped furniture price increases in the south east of England for the first time in 34 years, according to the Antique Collectors’ Club Antique Furniture Index. It is the first time property has taken the lead since the Index started at 100 in 1968. Furniture recorded a slight drop at the end of 2002, falling from 3575 to 3492.

DAVID Duggleby of Scarborough and Lyon & Turnbull of Edinburgh have joined the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers. The announcement of their membership comes as SOFAA also open their doors to valuers for the first time and change the society’s name to the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers.

THE one-day conference on the future of professional fine arts education and qualifications set for January 29 has been cancelled because not enough people signed up for it.

There were two surprising results at the Lempertz Asian Art sale in Cologne on November 22-23. This large, anonymous Japanese 17th/18th century Indian ink and watercolour, Daimyô in Kamishimo with tachibana weapons and two swords on a tatami mat, paper 4ft x 2ft 10in (1.22m x 86cm), right, soared 100 times estimate to make €80,000 (£51,300).

This icon of 20th century modernist design – Marianne Brandt’s celebrated tea infuser of 1927 was one of the highlights of Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg’s (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) 117-lot sale of 19th and 20th century design on December 11.

The easel that was used to create some of the most celebrated nursery images of the 20th century will be going under the hammer later on this month.

FILLED with nearly 200 dazzling images of battles, knights, damsels in distress, tournaments, and castles that represent the finest work of the Rouen illuminators of the early Renaissance and captures all the pageantry and drama of the Hundred Years’ War, the extraordinarily fresh illuminated manuscript of Froissart’s Chronicles that sold for £2.75m at Sotheby’s on December 3 must have been the finest and most profusely illustrated manuscript of that famous work ever made.

A 1467 second edition of the second part of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologiae, a massive treatise on moral rather than dogmatic theology that stands as an independent work, was one of the earlier printed highlights of a $4.69m (£2.97m) sale held by Sotheby’s New York on December 13, and once again it was one of a number of lots making a rapid return to the rooms.

A full-length Plains Cree Indian male costume from Saskatchewan River in Canada, consisting of a moose-hide shirt, pair of bottom tab leggings, and pair of soft-soled moccasins, sold for €130,000 (£83,300) at Millon & Associés (17.5/13.5% buyer’s premium) on December 2.

TENSION in the Middle and Far East has sparked a rapid rise in gold prices – the biggest in six years. The gold fix soared £4 an ounce in the second week of January – amplified to a $9 rise by the weakening dollar – as the world continued to brace itself for war in Iraq and further trouble with North Korea. Meanwhile low interest rates have made gold a more promising investment.

ON December 10 Cambridge auctioneers Cheffins (15% buyer’s premium) offered the residual contents from the home of amateur painter and gallery owner Olive Cook, whose early friendships with Henry Moore and Eric Ravilious helped hone her artistic eye.

NEIL Munro, the former managing director of DMG Antiques Fairs, has joined Shropshire-based Wellington Market Company, the owners of Town and Country Fairs, to create a dedicated antiques division.

NEW York-based fair organisers Wendy Management launch their Wendy International Antiques Show at the Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue and 67th Street, from March 7 to 11.

High quality watches are still in demand but condition is all-important to today’s discerning collectors. At a sale devoted entirely to watches at Christie’s King Street back on November 26, this gold chronograph pocket watch, right, by Louis Audemars c.1870 took £40,000.

Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg have refused to comment on a national press report that they are to cut half of their workforce and scrap their Impressionist and Modern art department.

Despite the recent media interest in the routine sale of Royal gifts through household staff and approved dealers, the practice of flogging Crown chattels is nothing new. More official and intimate material of royal provenance has buoyed the market for decades, if not centuries.

THE sad plight of silver is as well known as the boom in all Arts and Crafts pieces – what happens when the two come together was the question at Sworders’ sale when this pair of plated candlesticks, right, were offered.

THE Office of Fair Trading are investigating the activities of a London-based listings firm whose mailshots to the trade have sparked complaints.