UK

Since the start of the Chinese boom at UK auctions many, if not most, estimates have been little more than here-to-sell signals. Settling on a figure with which vendors are happy with, and then leaving it to the worldwide market on the net, is now common practice.

A volume containing Richard Hooker’s sixth and eighth books dealing with The Lawes of Ecclesiastical Policy… is a 1651 re-issue of an edition first published three years earlier. The principal attraction, however, was the armorial binding.

The busy market town of Beccles on the River Waveney at the edge of the Broads National Park in Suffolk started an antiques street market in the closed-off town centre nine years ago, in early May.

Recent exhibitions at London institutions such as the Modigliani show at Tate Modern may well have contributed to rising interest in folk art.

Manchester United fans grumbling about the current style of play will be interested to learn that when Matt Busby joined as manager he was contractually obliged to play entertaining football.

A 10in (25cm) tall Kangxi period (1654-1722) rouleau vase painted with fishermen and cranes took a six-times estimate £2800 at the 1200-lot Spring Sale at Hansons (20% buyer’s premium) on March 22-26.

Petworth Park Antiques & Fine Art Fair is bigger than ever this year as it returns for its fourth staging.

The theft of a piece of pottery from an antiques centre in Hampshire has been met with responses from other shop and centre owners reporting similar occurrences.

Delayed by snow for a week, the Spring Sale at Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) on March 27 opened with a local collection of Republic-era (1912-49) porcelain.

The feast from the east that that has put bread (and some Michelin-starred meals) on the table of dealers and auctioneers for more than a decade continues to do so at sales from Scotland to Surrey.

Well-situated on the North Yorkshire coast, Scarborough saleroom David Duggleby (21% buyer’s premium) is the regular recipient of pictures associated with one of the area’s biggest artistic exports.

An exhibition on two artists active during the Chilean dictatorship of General Pinochet opens at Austin/Desmond this month.

The paintings of Welsh landscape artist Kyffin Williams (1918-2006) are much in evidence in this, the year of his centenary, and nowhere so much as in his native land.

Classic camera collectors, users and dealers from around the world will be focusing their attentions this weekend on Photographica, the annual specialist fair organised in London by the Photographic Collectors’ Club of Great Britain.

Multi-estimate sums proved the norm among the star lots during London’s Islamic Week auction series.

Chinese porcelain resumed its traditional dominance among the Oriental offerings at Tennants (20% buyer’s premium) in Leyburn.

An ideal marriage of skills, rather than a clash of cultures, put a pair of c.1790-1800 Chinese export vases into the limelight at Hannam’s (20% buyer’s premium) sale at Selborne.

One of the smallest but most eye-catching lots at the Oriental sale at Bonhams Edinburgh (25% buyer’s premium) was two 4¼in (11cm) high Manchu officials’ bronze seals.

Works by the flamboyant Lord Berners come to auction from Faringdon House contents sale.

Early works painted before an artist has adopted their signature style can make for intriguing viewing – especially if that artist is widely known.