UK

CLARKE GAMMON's 584-lot sale on June 25 (15% buyer's premium) was most notable for the Sydney Oliver Trust costume and textile collection.

PROOF that the specialist collector knows no close season was offered in June by Weller & Dufty (15% buyer’s premium), at Birmingham and Wallis & Wallis (15% buyer’s premium), Lewes, who held sales devoted to arms and armour and militaria on consecutive days.

A Chinese works of art sale held by Christie’s on June 18 included a set of S.W. Bushell’s Oriental Ceramic Art illustrated by Examples from the Collection of W.T. Walters, published in 10 volumes in 1897 and illustrated with 116 chromos by Louis Prang after J & J.C. Callowhill.

FOR the third year running, Birmingham-based fairs director Fran Foster stages Antiques For Everyone – Scotland and she hopes that from August 23 to 25 the exhibitors – more than 100 dealers at Glasgow’s Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre – build on the considerable success of the first two.

“Up above the streets and houses, Rainbow climbing high...”. Down the Old Brompton Road in Christie’s salerooms on July 11, veteran fans of the 1970/80s psychedelic children’s TV programme Rainbow had good reason to croon the immortal lyrics of their favourite theme tune.

WITH a 96 per cent success rate after the June 13 sale, Bristol’s Clevedon Salerooms (15% buyer’s premium) seem to have convinced vendors of the realities of the market which means not everything makes its estimate.

SEVERAL pieces of mahogany furniture from a dilapidated stables near Weybridge provided the core to this 544-lot auction at Ewbank Auctioneers, Woking on June 27 (15% buyer's premium).

THE WEST Country is not the antiques wilderness it is sometimes painted but a relatively sparse population means that auctioneers cannot simply rely on local solicitors to provide the deceased estates. Networking the landed gentry at cocktail parties or hunt meetings is part of the social round for any flourishing local auctioneer and such contacts regularly pay dividends for Duke’s rooms in Dorchester.

CYPRESS wood was more commonly used for coffins than coffers in medieval times, but this Charles I example, right, showed why the Mediterranean hardwood was a popular medium for domestic furnishings.

THERE were few signs of recession at an old-fashioned, all-inclusive sale at Mallams Oxford on June 27 (15% buyer's premium) where more than 80 per cent of the 540 lots got away.

The Hambleton Group, who have built the world’s largest toy auction house, Vectis, launch a new auction business on Teesside with a sale of Georgian silver on August 22.

BONHAMS, who have just announced their acquisition of US fine art auctioneers Butterfields from eBay, are to consolidate almost their entire programme of London sales at Knightsbridge and Bond Street.

TOP LOT in this comparatively modest sale of Continental books and manuscripts at Sothebys on June 11, at £52,000 to a European dealer, was an autograph manuscript of one of Goethe’s more celebrated poems, Sehnsucht, (Longing) dated to c.1802-03.

The Zurich firm Numismatica Ars Classica (NAC) are opening an office in London. Negotiations for a Crown lease on prestigious premises in Waterloo Place (SW1) are well under way although they have suffered a slight setback which I understand will be resolved in the very near future. An autumn opening is planned.

Frontline forgery: LETTERS home during WW2 were extremely important to soldiers on the front. Each soldier was issued a quota of stamps which were specially overprinted to validate their posting from a specific location.

THEY had to meet sometime and it was a colourful clash when the two TV stars, interior designer Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen and dealer/presenter David Dickinson, chanced upon each other at the Ardingly International Antiques and Collectors Fair at the South of England Showground on July 16 and 17.

AT a convivial press lunch at Sotheby’s last week, scribes and dealers mingled to officially welcome the fifth Asian Art in London celebrations, scheduled for November 7 to 15.

AFTER a literary foray into the art world with her latest blockbuster Pandora, popular novelist Jilly Cooper will get a taste of the real thing on September 18 when she opens London’s 20/21 British Art Fair.

This month has seen a crop of antique arms and armour offered in the London rooms with Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams all holding sales in July. Pictured here is the most expensive item of the summer series, a rare cased Colt belt revolver of c.1840, which made £200,000 at Bonhams’ (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) sale in their Bond Street rooms on July 24.

WITH the furniture trade in a selective mood after a patchy round of June fairs, Bonhams relied upon local private buyers and international shippers to purchase the top pieces of furniture at their three-day Chester sale from 26-28 June.