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Christie’s and Sotheby’s failed to establish saleroom predominance in Paris in 2002, the first full year in which, thanks to France’s recent auction reform, they have been allowed to stage auctions on French soil.

SLOAN’S auctioneers of Washington DC have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a bid to keep the company afloat. The move follows recent reports that the company had debts of up to $5m and a string of unpaid consignors.

RICHARD Madley, former president of Christie’s East, New York, has returned to the UK and joined Hamptons with a view to increasing the firm’s presence in the auction market.

THE future of Stonegate Antiques Centre in York has been thrown into confusion amid a legal row and a police investigation into whether owner Anthony Gilberthorpe should face criminal charges.

Understandably, the Russians left this one behind when they liberated the Reichstag in 1945, but a Tommy NCO with a sense of humour decided to rescue this beleaguered portrait of the First World War German Field Marshall and Weimar president Paul von Hindenburg, right, from the ruins and take him back to the West Country.

Just where were those bears made? The familiar stands, seats and other furnishings fashioned as realistically carved bears, usually from limewood, have traditionally been attributed to the Black Forest region of West Germany but recent researches suggest that Switzerland is a more likely source.

A combination of vendors reluctant to consign the best quality goods and cautious bidding from the trade created a fairly low-key atmosphere at London’s traditional pre-Christmas round of Old Master picture sales.

WHILE the Irish picture market continues to boom, the Scottish market showed serious jitters at Bonhams Edinburgh (17.5% buyer’s premium) on the evening of December 5.

HOW can coins being sold on the rostrum in New York be sitting safely locked up in London and elsewhere at the same time? That is the conundrum facing the coins and medals world following the publication of a catalogue and results from a sale organised in New York by Riccardo Paolucci, a Yorkshire-based Italian dealer.

It must be the dream insurance policy: compensation for loss and the return of the goods stolen. But for security giant Chubb, it was a claim too far when wealthy art lover Michael Clarke-Jervoise demanded he be handed back a 17th century Dutch masterpiece for which they had earlier paid him £125,000 in compensation.

Coming up on December 11, 12 and 13 is Rupert Toovey & Co’s Sale of Antiques, Fine Art & Collectors’ Items, which will be the inaugural sale at their new Spring Gardens salerooms in Washington, West Sussex.

ONE of the most bizarre and unexpected results at Tennants’ sale in North Yorkshire on 21-22 December involved a collection of more than 200 19th century marbles, a selection of which are shown right.

Pint-sized dealers might be interested in getting hold of this immaculate little suit in black wool and cream cotton, measuring just 2ft 1in (63cm) from collar to trouser bottom, which is being offered by Bonhams in Knowle on December 11.

Thanks to the combination of sporting subject matter and extremely slick technique, Sir Alfred Munnings (1878-1959) continues to be one of the few early 20th century British painters to command a truly international following among the world’s richest private collectors.

The Beano and Dandy were the first British comics to be published entirely in colour when they appeared within months of each other in 1938. With a cover price of two old pennies, this first edition Beano achieved the highest price ever paid for a British comic when bidding closed at Comic Book Postal Auctions in London last week.

ONE of the more expensive lots in this Cumbrian sale at Thomson Roddick & Medcalf on 6 November was an 1881 [Philadelphia] limited edition of the Complete Poems and Prose of Walt Whitman. An ex-library copy in well worn cloth and bearing a typescript note that it was bought “...at the sale of the library of the late Lord Rosebery”, it made £920. Some copies are signed, but the catalogue referred only to a manuscript limitation statement.

The table pictured right was very much the star entry in a 230-lot sale of English and Continental furniture and works of art held at Bonhams (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) Bond Street rooms on November 26. It singled handedly accounted for a third of the entire £787,620 auction total when it made £260,000. Nothing else came near this in price, the next most expensive entry being a £19,000 Louis XV period marquetry commode.

Attentive readers of the Antiques Trade Gazette will remember the sale of the Lawrence R. Stack collection of English medieval coins at Sotheby’s in April 1999. He also had a good collection of French coins from the time of Henri IV (1589-1610) to about Waterloo. These were dispersed by Hess-Divo (15% buyer’s premium) in Zurich on October 24 in 380 lots.

THE British Antique Dealers Association are advising members who qualify for compensation in the wake of the Sotheby’s/Christie’s price fixing case not to miss the claims deadline.

Does the fine arts business warrant professional qualifications? What form should the education take? Should there be only one body representing the profession or several representing different aspects?