UK

LONDON Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse has written to the leader of Westminster Council condemning the redevelopment proposals for Burlington Arcade.

SETTING a house record at Cotswolds saleroom Tayler & Fletcher and helping them to their highest ever sale total, this small and previously unrecorded portrait by Anders Zorn (1860-1920), fetched £82,000 in Cheltenham.

WHILE most reports in the media focused on the record price paid for a pair of Queen Victoria's undergarments, Lyon & Turnbull's sale of works from the Forbes Collection raised the more serious question of the current state of the Victorian art market.

A MASSIVE Queen Anne cistern, which set a new auction high for English silver when it sold for £2.2m in 2010, is now on display at the Tudor mansion Temple Newsam in Leeds after it was acquired for the nation.

DEALERS at Grays antiques centre in Central London were left devastated earlier this month at the news that the hoardings for the Crossrail project at Bond Street station are likely to remain in place immediately outside the premises for at least three years.

IT could have been one of the sleepers of the century had it not been recognised and swiftly withdrawn from a Bonhams Oxford auction.

THE final lot of 233 offered at Michael Bowman's latest sale at the Chudleigh Town Hall, Devon was this limewood carving of a goose wing attributed to the Anglo-German artist Sir Hubert von Herkomer (1849-1914).

Planning issues affecting the future of antique trading in Portobello came to a head last week as councillors and their own planning officers fell out at a public meeting in front of dozens of campaigners.

Prints by Edward Wadsworth (1889-1949) are not a common sight on the market, but the Yorkshire-born artist who became a leading exponent of Vorticism was a prominent printmaker in the early stage of his career.

ADAM Partridge auctioneers and valuers are to move their Congleton operation to new premises in Macclesfield.

A LONG-running anti-trust complaint against the Andy Warhol Foundation – one that caused them to close the authentication service – concerned a work denied twice by their board.

POLICE are appealing for help after 27 Chinese works of art were stolen from Stroud Auction Rooms in Gloucestershire a day before they were due to be sold.

SILVER dealer Daniel Bexfield has launched a campaign to prevent developers revamping Burlington Arcade off London’s Piccadilly and getting rid of small independent traders in favour of major luxury brands.

DETECTIVE work by a Cornish auctioneer has led to a jail sentence for a 40-year-old former art teacher who defrauded galleries and members of the public by selling fakes.

A KENT auction house has withdrawn a sacred Aboriginal artefact from sale after intervention from cultural experts and the Australian High Commission.

A SILVER medal awarded to the Master of Admiral Lord Nelson's flagship HMS Victory, who was at the ship's helm throughout the Battle of Trafalgar is to be sold by Nantwich, Cheshire, auctioneers Peter Wilson.

YOU get the impression that the Chelsea Antiquarian Book Fair does not take itself too seriously – the opening page of the website bears the famous Groucho Marx quotation: "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

LONDON’S Frieze week opened with more cautious buying this year as concerns about the impact of the current economic turbulence in Europe and the US were much in evidence.

SLIGHTLY nervy might best describe mood in the opening days of the two big fairs in town last week.

A GOLD button which links the two most significant military figures in the foundation of the United States of America – George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette – will be sold in Leicestershire on November 1.