London

Bernard Jacobson, who has bought and dealt in works by artists such as Henri Matisse, David Hockney and Ben Nicholson, is not afraid to show off a little.

Lots offered towards the start of sales at the same auction house prove successful.

A dealer who was so disappointed that the second of the biannual Art Deco fairs held at Eltham Palace in September had been cancelled has launched his own nearby.

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.