UK

Auction figures for firms outside London show a shake-up of the status quo

The June calendar for art and antiques fairs is filling up as TEFAF revealed new dates.

Rare Japanese Meiji gold coin emerges at auction in West Sussex

Fine art dealer Daniel Hunt has launched an auction business opposite his former dealership in Sloane Street.

The so-called Arundel Lions were once a well-known landmark in Sheffield.

A sword sold at Kent auction house C&T (22% buyer’s premium) belonged to a British Antarctic explorer who died in 1912 – but not with Robert Falcon Scott.

Stall numbers are looking good at around 160 for Grandma’s Attic Fairs’ new antiques and vintage fair at Woking Leisure Centre which launches on Sunday, February 6.

A selection of these functional but fascinating objects that have appeared at recent sales

Francis Towne watercolour was one of his many works to have gone through Agnews

An update of events from Norfolk , Suffolk and London

The most unusual armour lot to emerge in recent sales was the late 16th century German brass parade cuirass which made £86,000 at Thomas Del Mar (20% buyer’s premium) in London on December 8.

The surprise lot at the sale held on December 11 by Ripon auction house Elstob & Elstob (22% buyer’s premium) was this 19th century Russian hunting dagger.

Angling and fishing fans will be familiar with the firm Hardy of Alnwick. In 1872 William Hardy set up shop as a gunsmith.

Estimated at just £60-100, a pair of Georgian portrait miniatures sold online for £2900 at Amersham Auctions (17.5% buyer’s premium) on January 6.

Leslie Fleischman runs Vintage Watch Room London, which specialises in 20th century watches marketed as ‘both affordable and stylish’.

Horology dealer who will stand at Lingfield says buyers are keen to do repairs themselves

A significant collection of works by George Bissill (1896-1973), the Derbyshire miner who enjoyed some fleeting success as an artist in the 1920s-30s but who later died largely forgotten, emerged recently at Mallams (25% buyer’s premium) in Oxford.

Superb set of the Dickens classic was painstakingly assembled as originally issued

Offered at Sotheby’s (26/20/13.9% buyer’s premium) in an online sale that ran until December 1 under the title of The Fantasy World of Arthur Rackham was a collection of 31 original ink and watercolour artworks by the artist from the collection of American photographer Shirley Carter Burden (1908-89).