UK

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.

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

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

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.

The year is well under way for Penman Fairs as it gears up for The Chester Antiques Fair.

If you want to find something unusual in the book and ephemera line, then head to one of the fairs held by the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA).

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.

This painting of a saint sold for a multi-estimate £5400 at London Auctions (22% buyer’s premium) in Chiswick.

Exhibition on Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell comes as interest and stock are both healthy

Jewellery specialist Joanna Hardy is usually found in glamorous locations.

An iconographic gold ring – perhaps once belonging to a bishop or senior member of the clergy in the Yorkshire area – sold for £7100 at Hansons (20% buyer’s premium) in Etwall, Derbyshire.

More glamorous sales will take place this year, but a week of four quality auctions at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne provided some solid reassurance about the state of the middle market.

A trio of literary discoveries star at Sim Fine Art’s upcoming exhibition.

Promoted as including the contents from a Derbyshire country home, the three-day pre-Christmas sale at Hansons (17.5% buyer’s premium) was more notable for two unusual collections and pieces which came in after a valuation day.