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Just the thing to lift the spirits in the cold, dark, stock-deprived days of winter, this spectacular whorl of a tropical centre table received a warm reception at the Salisbury salerooms of Woolley and Wallis on January 8.

Alfred Taubman has tendered his widely expected appeal against his price-fixing conviction. The 76-year-old former chairman of Sotheby’s, who could face up to three years in jail when he comes up for sentencing on April 2, has objected to the use of a quotation from 18th century Scottish economist Adam Smith.

Blackamoor, Taunymoor, Suck a Bubby; Your Father’s a Cuckold, Your Mother told me ....not the most familiar of nursery rhymes, nor indeed one likely to find much favour in the present century, but that rhyme, illustrated right, is only one of 37 found in the second volume of Tom Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, many of which are much more familiar, if not always in quite the same form as we know them now.

UK: THE Government have issued a warning to the trade about agencies attempting to cash in on the 1998 Data Protection Act at dealers’ expense.

A jewellery sale held by Sotheby’s on November 27 included a few exhibition and sale catalogues, plus a very rare and important work published in Moscow in 1925 by the People’s Commissariat of Finances.

The bird with the splendid hairdo pictured right is one of five original watercolours, possibly by Madam Knip herself, found in a special copy of Temminck & Knip’s Histoire naturelle des Pigeons of 1801-11 that sold for £30,000 to a private buyer at Christie’s November 28 sale.

COUNTRYWIDE hints that there may be some lift to the general silver market got a further boost at this Staffordshire sale on 28-29 November at Wintertons where one of the main sections comprised 13 silver lots, of which 90 per cent sold to both trade and private bidders with Christmas in mind.

Good stock furniture dominated this dispersal at Crowe's Auction Gallery led by a Regency walnut foldover card table.

Thomas Webb was one of the two main British manufacturers to produce glass imitating rock crystal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and this 12in (30.5cm) high Marine vase is a substantial example of the type.

This Edinburgh sale of ceramics and glass on 30 November was notably well attended from the South of England, with dealers from London, Nottingham and Gloucestershire on the floor of the saleroom.

Switzerland, Austria, The Pyrenees, the Rockies are all names one readily associates with skiing. Algeria, on the other hand, conjures up sun, sea and beaches but this poster advertising a winter sports week in 1930, 69 kilometres from Algiers, aims to show another side of North Africa.

THE Glasgow Boys school of painters will be the subject of the inaugural exhibition at the Fleming Collection at 13 Berkeley Street, London W1 at the end of this month.

FRANCE: Paris auction house Drouot reported a slight rise of 0.66 per cent in 2001 turnover to Fr4.11bn (£391m). Art sales rose five per cent to Fr3.47bn (£330m).

Japanese works of art sales will no longer be held on a regular basis by Sotheby’s New York. Specialist Sachiko Hori will be retained by the company, while her co-director Ryoichi Iida will become a consultant.

TRADING Standards officers have issued a warning to the trade to be on the alert for fake Royal Doulton. Several pieces have come to light over the past few months, including Lambeth Ware.

First icollector close their London operation, now sothebys.com consolidate service in New York: Growing acceptance that the US antiques trade and collectors are happier to complete transactions online than their UK counterparts is illustrated by two major moves that have just been announced.

Modern British in date, but blissfully unaffected by Fauvism, Cubism, Vorticism and just about every other ‘ism’ that was changing the face of Western art, Edgar Hunt (1876-1953) enjoys perennial popularity among picture buyers with more traditional tastes.

What is reckoned by the auctioneers to be a new auction record for Russian furniture was set at Christie’s December 13 Continental furniture sale in London when this 22in (56cm) wide silver- and ormolu- mounted faceted cut steel centre table, c.1785-90, sold for £620,000 to a European dealer after a battle between seven telephones.

The more collectable the antique, the greater difference small details make to the final price. This general rule may explain the contrasting prices on these two glass bowls, all but identical in date, c.1800, form and origin, Cork or Waterford.

She lived by her pen, but died by her brush. If Charlotte Brontë had been remotely skilled as a portrait artist she might not have turned to literary characterisations.