UK

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’.

Frieze Week, London’s annual contemporary art circus, means big business.

The August 1908 issue of Votes for Women, house magazine of the Women’s Social and Political Union describes ‘the latest novelty in the Union colours – a special belt and buckle, which is being sold at half-a-crown each’.

The English porcelain highlight of the last month was undoubtedly this Worcester coffee pot sold at Tunbridge Wells & Hastings.

Sotheby’s have appointed Fru Tholstrup as director of their new London S|2 gallery, to oversee the running and strategy behind this new purpose-built space for private selling exhibitions of Contemporary Art in Mayfair.

Doncaster auctioneer Sid Wilkinson is to sell items from a huge cache of Tudor pewter tablewares recently discovered by professional treasure hunters off the coast of the Dominican Republic.

This week is Frieze Week in London, a flurry of fairs, exhibitions and sales including the opening of the Contemporary art giant Frieze London.

Officers carrying out a fraud investigation at Stuart Porter Antiques in Stamford are asking any small dealers who rented space at the premises to contact them.

A Nobel Peace Prize medal stolen from the Lord Mayor’s Mansion House in Newcastle is still missing despite a 21-year-old man being jailed for the theft.

Bizarre, bonkers and not quite on the wall – the Bush Beano charity evening at the LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair in Berkeley Square on September 28 was refreshingly different for an antiques fair.

This small sculpture conveying the raw horror of the First World War attracted serious competition at Duke’s of Dorchester.

Some of the group of youthful dealers who make up ‘Young Guns of the Antiques Trade’ have clubbed together to exhibit in their own pavilion at the ‘Antiques for Everyone’ fair next at the NEC, Birmingham from October 31 to November 3.

In January 1862, while draining a field close to the site of Duffield Castle in Derbyshire, workmen from the Kedleston estate happened upon a quantity of ancient pottery shards.

The ‘Watercolours’ fair returns for its fifth year at the Science Museum, from February 6-8.

As London works of art dealer Danny Katz moves to new premises off Berkeley Square, Sotheby’s are to sell works from his Bond Street gallery.

There was a great deal of international interest, particularly from institutions, when this five-course baroque guitar by Matteo Sellas of Venice, from the second quarter of the 17th century, was offered at Gardiner Houlgate’s September 19-20 sale in Bath.

The Jane Austen’s House Museum at Chawton in Hampshire has raised the £150,000 needed to keep a gold turquoise ring once owned by Jane Austen in the country.

This James II or William and Mary silver-gilt travelling set c.1690 was among the exceptional pieces of English silver sold at the latest sale held by Mellors & Kirk of Nottingham.