UK

Dreweatts achieved their highest price to date in the Asian art market when an 18th century Sino-Tibetan thangka depicting the Milarepa cult sold for £450,000 at the firm’s first sale marking their participation in the Asian Art in London initiative.

It is not often that auctioneer Graham Budd finds his name splashed over the front pages of Estonian newspapers but when a particular group of cycling memorabilia came up at his November 4-5 sale it is exactly what happened.

Campaigners against the sale of 24 items of Chinese ceramics from Croydon council’s Riesco Collection were in a race against time to raise money for their judicial review.

This Yongzheng yellow and green enamel vase was the highest-selling lot from the week-long auction series of Asian art held in London.

Sotheby’s are to close Noortman Master Paintings, the London-based international art dealership, by December 31.

Partnership funding is the key to securing the future of a museum dedicated to the life and work of William Heath Robinson, the artist and illustrator whose name has, for 100 years now, been part of the English language.

The 23rd Winter Fine Art & Antiques Fair opened at Olympia in West London last week and as usual trade associations the BADA and LAPADA presented their respective best stand awards to exhibiting members.

This 6¾in (17cm) high, solid ivory head of the Virgin Mary, Hispano-Philippines, dating to the 17th-18th century, is the winner of the ATG Award for Asian art in London.

This remarkable fossil of one of the largest animals ever to have walked the Earth becomes the first large dinosaur skeleton to be offered at auction in the UK at Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst, West Sussex, on November 27.

This John Constable (1776-1837) portrait has been acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland from the estate of the artist Lucian Freud (1922-2011) through the Government’s Acceptance in Lieu scheme.

Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchet in Essex had to postpone last week’s Interiors sale after the St Jude’s storm knocked out their electricity supply for two days.

An 18th century casket made from fragments of Chinese porcelain has been bought by the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, County Durham.

Size, quality, condition and subject matter are the ingredients by which Berlin porcelain plaques are judged.

When Croydon council announced its controversial wish to sell off part of its Riesco collection of ceramics it probably didn’t envisage such a wave of protest.

A major bidding competition arose in Edinburgh last week as auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull offered this Old Master painting as part of their sale of contents from Lingholm House in Cumbria.

Bonhams have unveiled their new £30m headquarters at 101 New Bond Street, laying claim to the title of the world’s top saleroom complex.

Another Henry Moore sculpture has been taken in the latest in a spate of thefts targeting works by the artist.

Art dealers Messum’s have committed their future to London’s embattled Cork Street by acquiring a new gallery just down the road from their current premises.

The violin played by Titanic bandmaster Wallace Hartley as the ship slid beneath the waves on the morning of April 15, 1912, was always going to a) attract massive worldwide interest and b) bring in the big bucks at auction.

Sworders have sold the contents of Debden Manor, Essex from their saleroom in Stansted Mountfitchet – a house sale titled ‘An Architect’s Eye, A Collector’s Passion’.