UK

Posters advertising the first-ever public screening of a film, which took place in Paris in 1895, have hardly ever emerged outside France. While one is known in an American collection, the appearance of another at Sotheby’s latest online film posters auction understandably caused some excitement.

West Sussex auction house Bellmans has reshuffled its top team following the departure of managing director Jonathan Pratt, who left to join Dreweatts last month.

Considering that W Britain began making his revolutionary hollowcast toy soldiers only in 1893, a set dating from just three years later certainly deserves the tag ‘early’.

“The numbers are up to maximum capacity at 226 stands and there are a further 10 stands for calligraphers, marbled paper dealers and bookbinders – it’s the largest ever,” said York bookseller Janette Ray, spokeswoman for PBFA’s annual two-day York Book Fair.

One of the more unusual clocks on offer this summer was the late 19th century French ‘devil band’ mantel clock that attracted international bidding at Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium).

It’s fair to say the work of Victorian animal painter Sidney Cooper (1803-1902) is not flavour of the month.

Wide-ranging Lyell family archive brings high prices across the board in London.

One of the harder titles in the New Naturalist series to find today is RJ Berry’s Natural History of Orkney.

The product of child labour – but conscious-clear purchases for bidders – provided two of the top lots at a specialist textiles and costume sale at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) of North Yorkshire.

In a worn but period calf binding, a 1697 first of John Evelyn’s Numismata. A Discourse of Medals… made £350 in the book section of a recent Cornish auction.

Known familiarly as the ‘Audley End Lydgate’, the mid-15th century vellum manuscript shown below is ‘The Fall of Princes’, a Middle English version by the poet John Lydgate of Laurent de Premierfait’s French translation of Boccaccio’s De Casibus virorum illustrium.

Racing round the banking at Brooklands in Surrey, Sir Tim Birkin is shown to dramatic effect in this oil painting by Dion Pears, below.

In an increasingly complex marketplace, how should auctioneers and dealers charge for their services?

The art and antiques trade were warned to be ready for the new money-laundering regulation coming into force next year.

“Isn’t it possible that the Irish could be just as brilliant in the visual arts as they have been in music and literature?”

Romanians, Hungarians, Saxons, Roma and Russians have all historically lived in the area in central Romania known as Transylvania. Each group had its own distinct culture, but after years of living side-by-side these ‘families’ drew inspiration from one another.

The welcome news of an antiques centre opening a few doors from one which closed last year comes from the market town of Pickering in North Yorkshire.

Two lots offering heraldic manuscripts – one of them being of particular regional interest – produced the highest bids in a mixed sale of collectables and militaria held in Shrewsbury.