UK

ON June 24, Gloucestershire auctioneers Chorley's will offer for sale this enormous 47 x 47ft (14.3 x 14.3m) reconstruction of the Orpheus pavement, a Roman mosaic.

THIS rare Charles II clock by John Knibb of Oxford, c.1685, was recently found by the vendor when sorting through effects inherited from a family member around 50 years ago.

WHEN the ‘To Let’ signs in the windows at the former Partridge Fine Art gallery on Bond Street were removed earlier this month, and ‘Let’ signs took their place, rumours abounded as to who the new tenants might be.

BRYAN Goodall, owner of the Hambleton Group which includes toy auctioneers Vectis of Stockton-on-Tees, has invested £600,000 in ArtsBank, a new gallery and arts centre in nearby Saltburn-by-the-Sea.

A REWARD of £50,000 is being offered in the bid to recover more than £1m worth of art stolen in a violent theft from a private collector in Bruton, Somerset.

Last month in Harrogate, auctioneers Morphets held a sale of what is thought to be the biggest collection of vintage railway posters ever to come on the market.

DORCHESTER saleroom Duke's achieved the highest price for a UK regional auctioneer so far this year when this Qianlong mark and period vase sold at £625,000 on February 11.

The Detling Antiques and Collectors' Fair on February 27-28 will be the last held at the Kent County Showground by the current organisers. A new organiser is taking on the fair after International Antiques & Collectors' Fairs failed to agree new terms with the venue.

WORCESTERSHIRE auctioneer Philip Serrell has been asked to sell, at short notice, Cotswolds School furniture from the dormitories of Hazelrigg Hall, now part of Loughborough University.

DUBLIN auctioneers Adam’s are to open a new office in Northern Ireland – and take over the running of one of the province’s leading commercial galleries.

SIGNS of recovery at the top end of the art market were seen again as greater levels of international bidding emerged at the latest contemporary art auction series in London.

THE Berkeley Square Art & Antiques Fair announced last October by Paris-based Patrick Perrin and London-based Stéphane Custot is now no longer taking place this June.

IT is in the nature of display cabinets not to stand out. By definition they are unobtrusive vehicles intended to take a back seat to their contents.

SEVERAL dealers at Sunbury Antiques Market at Kempton Park on Tuesday, January 26, were duped by a woman using a stolen chequebook.

The Norwich dealer James Brett is to sell 300 pieces of his stock of English and Continental furniture and decorative items in a single-vendor sale at Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchet on March 9.

THE luxury goods fair Masterpiece London has been granted planning permission for an inaugural event at the former Chelsea Barracks from June 24 to 29.

If the price paid for Alberto Giacometti's (1901-1966) sculpture L'Homme qui Marche I is anything to go by, then the art market is now striding out of recession. Selling for £58m (plus premium) at Sotheby's evening sale on February 3, it became the most expensive object ever sold at auction.

SERIOUS levels of demand emerged for works at the very top end of the art market as this month’s flagship Impressionist and Modern art auction series raised a combined hammer total of £225.8m, massively up on the £108.8m for the equivalent series last year.

A GROUP of Portobello Road dealers are to lobby the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea following the loss of a prominent antiques arcade to a highstreet retailer.

A PAIR of silver-gilt waiters made by William Burwash for William Beckford, “the wealthiest commoner in England” who built the lavish Gothic Revival Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire, sold for £36,000 at auction last week.