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The London Assay Office (LAO) is to launch a crackdown on what it says is a rise in illegal antique silver being offered for sale.

The 20/21 British Art Fair will take place in Saatchi Gallery this year with an expanded timeline and the new name of British Art Fair following its sale to new owners.

Growth “across all value levels of the market” helped global sales at Christie’s increase by 26% to £5.1bn in 2017, says Orlando Rock, chairman of Christie’s UK.

A pendulum clock used in an early longitude trial will be offered for sale by Dreweatts next month.

Heritage Auctions says more than half of its sales are now made through the internet.

The most eye-catching price at the latest series of Old Master and 19th century art sales in New York came at Sotheby’s separately staged auction of drawings from the collection of the late Howard and Saretta Barnet.

Antiques dealership Mallett and book specialist Bloomsbury are to be relaunched this year after being reunited with former stablemate Dreweatts.

Texas-based fine art and collectables specialist Heritage Auctions announced a number of new developments to its mobile app last month. Advances included one-touch mobile bidding and an extension to the barcode scanning facility for coins.

Works on paper, not oil paintings, stole the show at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne.

Two exceptionally rare celestial globes or spheres have made their mark in Geneva and London salerooms in recent times – and on the same day.

The December 6 jewellery sale at Roseberys (23% buyer’s premium) was the maiden auction for new head of department Mark Bowis.

Launched in 1965, TV Century 21 featured the work of some of the best comic artists of the day – among them Ron Turner, whose contributions included strips featuring The Daleks, Stingray and Captain Scarlet.

ATG’s selection of auction lots bought by internet bidders on thesaleroom.com from the period January 25-31, 2018. This includes both the highest prices over estimate and the top prices paid online.

A previously unrecorded painting attributed to Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, the Italian Old Master known as il Guercino (1591-1666), has been consigned to Cambridge auction house Cheffins.

Deemed a little ostentatious in some Western circles, tiaras remain popular with the so-called ‘new’ markets.

The closing nine lots in Lawrences’ January 18 sale were consigned by a lady in Somerset. They had belonged to her mother and grandmother and had been kept in a safe deposit box in the bank for about the last 30 years.