UK

English wines are steadily gaining a reputation for decent quality, with sparkling styles in particular starting to challenge Champagne as an alternative patriotic option. Back in 1889, it was Welsh whisky throwing the gauntlet down to Scotland in the hope of supping long-running success.

Haughton International Fairs has cancelled its annual ‘Art Antiques London’ fair in the face of “adverse market conditions and rapidly rising costs”.

Julian Dawson is retiring from Gorringe's and held his last auction yesterday at the Lewes auction firm.

Property developer and collector Harry Hyams, who died in December 2015, has left much of his £487m estate to a charity that will preserve his collection for the nation.

Pete Waterman, Neil Young, Roger Daltrey and Peter Snow all do it. Frank Sinatra and Peter Sellers did it. Rod Stewart apparently hires extra hotel rooms on tour to indulge in it. ‘It’ being the innocent and highly popular pastime of model railways.

A group of three Doccia porcelain dishes from c.1740-45 sold for £70,000 at a stellar sale at Cheffins in Cambridge.

A temporary export bar has been placed on a rare Wedgwood vase in the hope £482,500 can be raised to keep it in the UK.

A suspected antiques scammer faced court accused of taking antiques worth more than £650,000 from elderly people.

Asian art dealers Roger and Miranda Keverne donated a Chinese export painting, depicting pirates on the China coast, to the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.

Christie’s Guillaume Cerutti has been promoted to become the auctioneer’s chief executive, replacing Patricia Barbizet who will become vice chairman.

Most collectors have a burning passion. For John and Patricia McKenzie, the items that fired their interest were vesta cases, the small portable boxes made to contain matches and keep them dry.

MP and BADA president Victoria Borwick has given a passionate defence of the antique ivory trade in Parliament, strongly arguing against a total ban.

LAPADA, The Association of Art & Antiques Dealers, has announced the programme for its 2017 conference which will tackle some of the major issues dealers face today.

If you want to imagine what a bulletproof vest might look like if designed in the 16th century, a couple of fascinating pieces of very rare armour bought by the Victoria & Albert Museum give a clue.

“Zulus, Sir. Thousands of ‘em”  - one of the classic lines from the 1964 film starring Stanley Baker and Michael Caine that brought the heroic defence of Rorke’s Drift to public attention.

A group of art and antiques dealers, fairs and museums have become the first to use the new internet domain name of ‘.art’.

In our weekend series, Antiques Trade Gazette brings you a selection of quotes from dealers, auctioneers, collectors and others – from ivory inlays to a tsunami.

The owner of large parts of Cork Street in Mayfair has launched a new strategy to attract Modern and Contemporary art galleries once the multi-million pound redevelopment is complete.

Uniforms can be a hard sell at militaria auctions. Medals for example are nice and easy to display, while guns can sit high on the wall or in a cabinet, but what do you do with a full set of battledress unless you happen to be a re-enactor or happen to live in a mansion with lots of room for mannequins?

Medals specialist David Erskine-Hill has left Dix Noonan Webb to rejoin former employer Spink.