UK

Pioneering astronomical works which appeared many centuries before the moon landing sell at auction.

Martyn Fowler (answering 5Qs below) and his mother Jackie Harris run Puckhaber Decorative Antiques in Lillie Road, London. The firm has been showing at the Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair in Battersea for more than 10 years and launched a second shop on the High Street in Rye, East Sussex, in May.

An exceptional example of Thai silversmithing has sold for £13,500 (plus 17.5% buyer’s premium) in Leicestershire.

Under forthcoming UK ivory legislation, there will be no legitimate market for bronze and ivory Art Deco figures.

While the vast majority of works at Old Master sales are by European artists, an unusual offering at Bonhams’ sale on July 3 was a Latin American work by a painter with Afro-Caribbean ancestry.

Art in Clay Hatfield has been running for 25 years and is regarded as one of the most important ceramic and pottery festivals in Europe.

Christie’s highest price for an Old Master this summer came in the stand-alone Masterpieces from a Rothschild Collection sale on July 4.

A copy of 'The Island of Adventure' offered in a Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) sale of June 19-20 sold for £360 – just £10 short of the auction record set for a copy it had offered back in 2006.

A lot comprising 31 posters plugging top groups and festivals from 1969-72 was the major hit at Bellmans’ (22% buyer’s premium) Photographs, Posters and Prints sale.

Our regular listings of British and Irish book auctions.

The market for European ‘decorative arts’ – the wealth of late 19th and early 20th century ceramics, metalwork and design – has been in a constant state of flux since it first entered mainstream collecting in the late 1960s. As tastes evolve, so does pricing.

Penzance auction house David Lay (18% buyer’s premium) is no stranger to the great Chinese boom but in July it staged Cornwall’s first dedicated Asian sale.

Original lithographs by Joan Miró and Marc Chagall star at Eames Fine Art’s exhibition 'Behind the Mirror'. Held at the Bermondsey galley from August 8-September 1, the show is named for the magazine, Derrière le Miroir, the leading modern art publication in 20th century Paris along with Verve.

Patchworks stitched together by successive generations in poor Japanese communities offered in Kensington exhibition

Shown below is a spread from a 120pp manuscript collection of Scottish songs with accompanying musical notation, on paper watermarked 1799, that sold at £600 in a Thomson Roddick (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale.

Despite some minor loss to the head of 'When We Were Very Young', published in 1924 and a first edition of what are now collectively known as the ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ books, overall the set pictured below is an exceptionally well-preserved one.

It’s with a rather heavy heart that Mike Collins, director of specialist market operator Sherman & Waterman, has announced that he is giving up running the Friday antiques market at Bermondsey.

It may be a well-rehearsed refrain, but the Old Master market is much more subject to vagaries of supply than demand. Almost without fail, when high-quality fresh material is offered, bidders will come. Just getting it in the first place is the hard part.

A round-up of news and moves from dealers and galleries.

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