UK

SETTING the highest price ever seen at auction for Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), this lifesize sculpture of a mother and child, overshot its £60,000-80,000 estimate at Sotheby's latest sale of Modern British art in London before being knocked down to a private buyer at £120,000.

GREAT Grooms owner James Podger has issued an alert to the Hungerford antiques trade after his premises were ‘cased’ by potential burglars.

ANGELIC rosy-cheeked village girls were George Clausen’s (1852-1944) staple subject matter. During his time living in the Berkshire village of Cookham Dean, Clausen was particularly preoccupied with this idyllic rural subject matter and, from around 1889, he began to make a series of studies and paintings of a local child, Rose Grimsdale.

ARTHUR Swallow Fairs, organisers of the giant antiques and collectors’ event at the Lincolnshire Showground, will launch two new fairs this year.

THE original autograph stock book of Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, found in a box of girlie magazines, sold for £25,000 (plus 17% buyer's premium) at the Shropshire auctioneers Mullock's in Ludlow.

MOST Star Wars aficionados are familiar with the story of the Flintshire pensioner who bought 20 Palitoy action figures for 49p each in 1978 and sold them at Stockton-on-Tees toy specialists Vectis for a small fortune in 2003.

CANTERBURY Auction Galleries are to embark on a new sales format that will double the number of fine sales held annually and offer every lot to a potential worldwide audience of Internet bidders.

AFTER being closed since early March, The Good Fairy Market in Portobello Road reopened on May 8, to the surprise of some dealers at the Saturday market.

CONTRIBUTING handsomely to the largest grossing sale ever conducted by a regional auctioneer, this 7in (18cm) high Chinese Imperial white jade bell sold for £2m hammer at Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury on May 19 – the first day of a two-catalogue Asian art sale.

A WEEK before she launches her West London Art & Antiques Fair, Caroline Penman has announced another new summer event, The Towcester Antiques Fair which will take place at Towcester Racecourse in Northamptonshire from June 25 to 27.

CONSIDERED the finest work by the Italian Baroque master Domenico Zampieri, Il Domenichino (1581-1641), in private hands, this painting of St John the Evangelist has been saved for the nation. It has gone on display in the National Gallery's Baroque rooms.

Despite recent developments in the case against the notorious Johnson family, including the recovery of stolen antiques in Worcestershire, innumerable valuable works of art remain at large.

• Stoker's great granddaughter puts unique cache up for sale • Collection includes, letters, photos and even table waresA remarkable collection of documents and artefacts relating to the ill-fated British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-13 will be sold by Bamfords of Derby on May 26. The cache of largely unseen material has been entered for sale by the great granddaughter of Edward Archibald McKenzie, a crewman on the expedition supply ship Terra Nova.

There has been a happy ending to the century-long story of a missing pub sign painted in 1899 by Arts and Crafts artist Walter Crane for the Fox and Pelican pub in the Hampshire village of Grayshott.

• Stock book should help rewrite story of leading artistAN overlooked item in a box of magazines sold at auction for a few pounds could help rewrite the story of one of the most sought after of England’s Victorian painters.

LAST week's letter from the deputy leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council, Councillor Daniel Moylan, (click here to read letter) replying to my commentary on the Portobello planning dispute in ATG No 1937, took me to task for swallowing 'uncritically the claims being made about the council' with regards to Portobello Road, 'almost as if he is unaware that there are elections on and that Portobello lies at the heart of a ward being bitterly contested by Labour and the Lib Dems'.

THIS letter from the Deputy Leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council Daniel Moylan appeared in ATG issue no. 1939, May 8.

WHEN Shropshire auctioneers Mullock’s sold a dealer’s stock for nearly 50 per cent above estimate, they thought that the vendor’s sole reaction would be one of satisfaction. Instead, they found themselves in court and having to pay out hundreds of pounds in compensation and costs.

MORE than 130 pieces of Caughley blue and white porcelain from a Worcestershire collection sold for £56,000 when it returned to Shropshire for sale at Halls in Shrewsbury.

WEST COUNTRY-based Cooper Fairs have bought The Pavilions of Harrogate Antiques & Fine Art Fair from Essex organiser Robert Bailey.