London

James Butterwick is a dealer in Russian art of the early 20th century in London.

MADAM – I am mortified to find myself at the cusp of ending one of London’s oldest and favourite art and antiques fairs, unless someone would like to take it on?

A rare early Worcester plate, c.1752, painted in Chinese famille verte style is offered by dealer Robyn Robb at 'A Collectors’ Paradise', the annual group selling show of pottery and porcelain in St James’s. Offered for £9500, it features a bird perched on a flowering prunus tree.

This abstract oil on paper is among the works on paper by the modern British painter Adrian Heath (1920-92) currently on show at St James’s gallery Alan Wheatley Art.

A rare Roman gold aureus, found by a metal detectorist in a field in Kent earlier this year, was hammered down at Dix Noonan Webb last week for a house record £460,000.

Sotheby’s believes it has found a missing piece from the Lewis chessmen hoard – the cache of 12th or 13th century walrus ivory carvings that chiefly resides in the British Museum.

An impressive 8in (20cm) high ice pail, cover and liner made what is thought to be a record auction result for Swansea porcelain when it sold for £38,000 hammer at Bonhams in Knightsbridge on June 5.

Connect – The Independent Art Fair, which debuted at London’s Mall Galleries in January, has added a June event to the 2020 calendar.

The latest week of Russian art auctions in London generated £35.8m including premium, the highest total for a June series in this category since 2014.

French commode forms good example of selling strategy at long-standing London event

Undoubtedly the most evocative account of the workshop of the celebrated clockmaker Joseph Knibb comes from a letter written by the Restoration-era politician Richard Legh (1635-87) of Lyme Hall in Cheshire to his young wife, Elizabeth.

When Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), leading artist of the French Romantic school, died in 1863, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts commissioned a bust to commemorate the painter and embody his genius.

On July 2 Sotheby’s will hold the first of a four-part series of sales to disperse an important collection of clocks and pocket watches.

During an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic in 1996, a marine chronometer made by JW Ray, Liverpool, was recovered and brought ashore.

Kensington Church Street clock dealer Howard Walwyn will offer this previously unknown Thomas Tompion walnut and mulberry longcase at the Masterpiece fair in London.

A Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of May 30 ran to well over 540 lots in all, but it was very early in proceedings that a much, much higher than predicted bid of £26,000 was made on an 1853, presentation first of 'Palm Trees of the Amazon and their uses.