UK

With the BBC’s hit series now 40 years old, we find out producer Simon Shaw's views on its success ahead of the broadcast of his last Roadshow series.

At the start of October, London is in for a feeding frenzy as art collectors, curators and member of the trade descend on the city. This year, four major fairs open in the capital in the first week of October offering a huge selection of antiques, fine art, decorative and vintage.

This c.1780 portrait of a young girl with a pet dog is among the pieces offered at the upcoming Galloway Antiques Fair at Duncombe Park.

The group of regional auctioneers known as The Association of Accredited Auctioneers (AAA) has relaunched as an organisation to promote business and pool resources in the face of “a post-Brexit world and a rapidly changing market”.

Best of 193 lots of film posters which made up a specialist sale at Burstow Hewett (15% buyer’s premium) at Battle was this variation for the classic movie The Maltese Falcon.

Christian and Ben Scrimgeour’s weekly Sunday vintage market in Flat Iron Square in Southwark Street, near London Bridge, is also now held on a Saturday, making a weekend of it.

In recent years Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) has enjoyed considerable success with cookery manuscripts and the most recent auction further enhanced the saleroom’s recipe for culinary success.

ATG previews three aviation events taking place around the country...

The British Antique Dealers’ Association (BADA) is developing new technology to enable remote interaction between dealers and clients.

The field encompassed by ‘Design’ sales is being diligently tilled by many UK auctioneers aware of the potential of a market appealing to younger buyers wary of traditional antiques.

Enhancing a growing reputation at Edinburgh auction house Thomson Roddick (17.5% buyer’s premium) for optical instruments, a recent sale included 18 lots of binoculars and the like.

About a month ago, collector Robert Mulraine launched a website dedicated to the artist Thomas Baker of Leamington (1808-1869). A great enthusiast of the Victorian landscape painter, he has been working with the curatorial team of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to create an online ‘Memoranda of Pictures’ based on the artist’s five diaries in the museum’s collection.

In our continuing series looking through the keyhole of ‘bricks and mortar’ shops in 2017, this week ATG talks to Chris Hardie about The House of Rust which opened two years ago. He says: “If it’s quirky, odd or just downright amazingly ‘rusty’, then you’ll probably find it here.”

Details on the back of a pastel drawing lead to detective work and royal portraitist connection...

Charlie King has reason to be proud of his performance at the Hingham Antiques Fair in Norfolk in August when he closed a deal for £900 on a 1906 Arts & Crafts silver tazza.

Less than six months after holding its first auction in its Pall Mall home, Stanley Gibbons’ The Fine Art Auction Group (TEFAAG) has left the central London premises and is in the process of selling the lease.

Bid to £45,000 at Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) was an extensively revised and corrected autograph draft of what was to become Charles Dickens’ tale of ‘Mrs Gamp with the Strolling Players’.

Three gallery shows will focus on Scottish art of the later 20th century.

Along with around 10 other stallholders, Mason’s Ironstone dealer Susan Skelton has been standing at the biannual two-day Peterborough Festival of Antiques since it launched in 1999.