UK

The most stunning price of London’s summer auction season came at Christie’s last week when the competition that emerged on ‘Love among the Ruins’ by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98) was one of the strongest ever seen for a Victorian picture.

An extraordinary cache of 2794 Victorian farthings, all dated 1890, of the same type, and generally all in glorious mint state, have been consigned as lot 680 to Woolley & Wallis’s upcoming Silver and Collectors’ sale in Salisbury.

Mike Collins is to build on his success running Bermondsey Antiques Market by trialling a night antiques market during the summer.

Even in the collecting field of the ‘heroic age’ of Polar exploration where items reflecting incredible stories of human endurance seem to come thick and fast, there are still some that really take the breath away.

On the eve of the major Old Masters sales in the auction houses, Mayfair dealers Colnaghi of 15 Old Bond Street announced the sale of a recently rediscovered ‘Venus’ by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553).

Strong competition for a number of key works gave a major lift to the latest round of Old Master auctions in London.

This remarkable 1773 longcase clock by Hugh Lough of Penrith proved the top-selling lot at Mitchells of Cockermouth when it sold at £19,000.

Auctioneers Frank Marshall of Knutsford and Wright Manley of Beeston, both in Cheshire, have announced that they are to merge.

Woburn Antiques Centre, at the heart of the Woburn Abbey Estate in Bedfordshire, is to close on September 1.

This c.1614 polychrome alabaster sculpture lost from a London church during the Blitz has been returned to its original location.

Sotheby’s have issued a robust defence of the British Postal Museum & Archive in the wake of strong criticism of the decision to sell off a tranche of its stamp collection valued at up to £5m.

A Suffolk-based jewellery dealer with over 30 years experience in the trade faces ruin after falling victim to a sophisticated robbery last month.

The two-day House & Garden Sale at Mallams in Abingdon, Oxfordshire saw this near pair of early 20th century Louis Vuitton ‘malle armoire secretaires’ sell for £24,000.

He may have conquered much of Europe, but time waits for no man, as Napoleon found out on May 5, 1821.

Many of us are addicted to books, so perhaps the premises of a leading rare book dealer, Maggs Bros in London’s Berkeley Square, is an ideal setting for ‘Opium: Santo Domingo Collection’, which brings together some 3000 objects, books, photographs and documents on the history of opium, its use and trade.

This stoneware bird jar dated 1891 established a new auction record for Martin Brothers when it made £67,000 at the latest Arts and Crafts sale held by Woolley & Wallis.

A painting of a Venetian palace by Claude Monet (1840-1926) led the latest round of Impressionist and Modern art auctions in London.

Abstinence was a ceremonial requirement prior to worshipping the ancestors, the heavens or other deities in the Qing court.

Setting a major house record at South London auctioneers Rosebery’s, this oil painting by Léon Bakst (1866-1924) drew eight interested parties at the West Norwood saleroom last week.