UK

The Brontë museum hopes to raise funds to buy rare manuscripts from a rediscovered library collection coming up for sale at Sotheby’s.

The Royal Academy of Music has said it has no plans to sell or dispose of any of its historic instruments after national media reported it was looking into ‘decolonialising’ its collection.

This rare pair of south Italian or Sicilian devotional plaques (capezzali) sold for £26,000 at Matthew Barton of Olympia Auctions in west London on May 25.

In the year commemorating 200 years since the death of Napoleon, pendant portraits of Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte have been reunited after more than a century apart.

Extensive cross-section of design-themed objects offered in Edinburgh and London by same auction house

This half-tester bed with its carved heraldic lions and painted and gilt panels is part of an extensive bedroom suite made c.1870 by Collier & Plucknett.

Famous Kelmscott edition and copies of unpublished letters both attract strong bidding at Bonhams' books sale

Exhibition concentrates on John Craxton works before he moved to Greece after the war

As live fairs and markets return in strength, Richard Burgoin, director of Arthur Swallow Fairs, is in the midst of his summer season of events.

Almost two decades after the first American cast-iron mechanical banks, John Harper and Company of the Albion Works in Willenhall, Staffordshire filed a patent for the Wimbledon bank on September 21, 1885.

Lyon & Turnbull’s Lalique sale had been displayed at the Mall Galleries in London with posters from the Shell Heritage Art Collection as a backdrop.

Anne Swift and her son Phil run Swift Antique Lace, trading from a stall in London’s Portobello Road antiques market.

A New and Correct Plan of the Cities of London, Westminster and Borough of Southwark sold at Reeman Dansie (20% buyer’s premium) of Colchester was offered on behalf of an un-named charity.

Sold for £3000 as part of a four-day sale held by Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium) of Wisborough Green was what was billed as a gold mounted rectangular book binding, probably European and 19th century but in the 18th century taste.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Our regular listing of UK and Irish book auctions.

Modern British pictures sold at Gildings’ (20% buyer’s premium) recent Fine & Decorative Arts and Antiques auction helped the Leicestershire saleroom to the highest total in its 41-year history.

Algernon Newton (1880-1968) has been one of the stars of the season with both his urban and rural scenes attracting high prices in the regions in the last month.

New reference work details an illuminating form of gift that took off in the Victorian era