London

The Winter Art & Antiques Fair Olympia has been saved and will return this year in a new format thanks to commitment from more than 50 dealers.

Eye-catching, head-turning and mouth-watering: it was the human form, from ancient statuettes to modern portraits, that caught buyers’ attention at the most recent edition of London Art Week.

It has not been a vintage season for armour in the saleroom, but some of the recent highlights from London and Munich are shown here.

This early Meissen teapot and cover was among the stand-out sales at the joint selling exhibition 'A Collectors’ Paradise' held at Brian Haughton Gallery in St James’s.

The classic English sporting gun is a sidelock, but for many the ‘round-action’ shotguns perfected by John Dickson of Edinburgh in the 1870s are the most elegant of all.

Edged weapons from the East dominated the summer sale at Thomas Del Mar (24% buyer’s premium) in London on June 27 and it was an old collection of Indian dress daggers that produced the highest prices.

Ivory frames to this 18th century wooden box, below, with tortoiseshell panels, did nothing to hold back bidding on currently hugely popular Indo-Portuguese material.

Two albums of 19th century watercolours and drawings produced unexpected results in summer sales.

A rare and early combination of a war hammer and pistol was a highlight of the Bonhams (25/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale in Knightsbridge on May 23, selling for £24,000.

The top lot at Bonhams (25/12.5% buyer’s premium) in San Francisco on June 19 was an exceptional cased example of a specially engraved Colt 1851 percussion revolver with shoulder stock.

One of the earlier big attractions of the new season will be the September 18-19 auction at Sotheby’s of the Erwin Tomash library on the history of computing.

Two high-quality works on paper made their presence felt at the top end of the Old Masters market during the latest series in London.

Collaboration between photography and sculpture specialists is both the theme and the method behind Huxley-Parlour’s exhibition 'Auguste Rodin: The Photographs'.

Portuguese silver and jewellery dealer J Baptista is to expand into London by opening a stand in Grays Antique Centre.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

The so-called auricular style – all organic fluid lines and asymmetrical shapes populated by marine invertebrates and reptiles – can first be found in the 1598 ornament book of Northern Mannerism, Architectura…, by Wendel Dietterlin of Stuttgart.

An early Anglo-Dutch portrait of the swashbuckling English sea captain Sir Francis Drake topped Bonhams’ Old Master paintings sale on July 4 in New Bond Street. It sold for £290,000, just below its juicy £300,000-500,000 guide.