London

Fine German sidelock ejectors do not feature often in the London salerooms but Gavin Gardiner’s 25% buyer’s premium) May 1 sale of sporting guns at Sotheby’s in London produced a pair that not only scored on quality but had a history to back it up.

Antiques dealer and furniture designer/maker Christopher Howe hosts a warehouse sale this autumn giving buyers access to his entire stock for the first time in his 30-year career.

The huge variety of exotic arms brought back to Europe from the East during colonial days is becoming an increasingly lucrative area of business for auction houses.

The collecting of English military swords is a science in itself.

In the days of the British Raj there was no shortage of would-be shikaris hoping to bag a tiger in India. At the same time plenty of London gunsmiths were ready to supply them with all the fire-power they could persuade them to buy.

The 102nd staging of the London Antique Arms Fair is on Saturday, August 24.

Alison Davis and Alan Old of So Last Century Vintage and Retro Fairs are launching a third fair in south London.

There’s no doubt that items from some of the ‘eureka’ moments in Victorian design are falling away from the collecting zeitgeist. The current fashion is undoubtedly towards the creative ideas of the second half of the 20th century.

Pioneering astronomical works which appeared many centuries before the moon landing sell at auction.

Martyn Fowler (answering 5Qs below) and his mother Jackie Harris run Puckhaber Decorative Antiques in Lillie Road, London. The firm has been showing at the Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair in Battersea for more than 10 years and launched a second shop on the High Street in Rye, East Sussex, in May.

While the vast majority of works at Old Master sales are by European artists, an unusual offering at Bonhams’ sale on July 3 was a Latin American work by a painter with Afro-Caribbean ancestry.

Christie’s highest price for an Old Master this summer came in the stand-alone Masterpieces from a Rothschild Collection sale on July 4.

Original lithographs by Joan Miró and Marc Chagall star at Eames Fine Art’s exhibition 'Behind the Mirror'. Held at the Bermondsey galley from August 8-September 1, the show is named for the magazine, Derrière le Miroir, the leading modern art publication in 20th century Paris along with Verve.

Patchworks stitched together by successive generations in poor Japanese communities offered in Kensington exhibition

Despite some minor loss to the head of 'When We Were Very Young', published in 1924 and a first edition of what are now collectively known as the ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ books, overall the set pictured below is an exceptionally well-preserved one.

It’s with a rather heavy heart that Mike Collins, director of specialist market operator Sherman & Waterman, has announced that he is giving up running the Friday antiques market at Bermondsey.

It may be a well-rehearsed refrain, but the Old Master market is much more subject to vagaries of supply than demand. Almost without fail, when high-quality fresh material is offered, bidders will come. Just getting it in the first place is the hard part.