UK

Work has begun on an £8m expansion at Tennants which will provide three new salerooms.

The argument was lively at this year’s ATG debate at the Summer Olympia fair, as BADA and LAPADA dealer Lennox Cato and Be Smart About Art founder Susan Mumford, disputed whether a gallery is still necessary for business in the modern marketplace.

The Museums Association is seeking urgent talks with Croydon Council to question them about a plan to sell 24 items from their 230-piece antique Chinese ceramics collection.

Bonhams have announced that they have secured potentially the most valuable lot among the works being sold from the Dr. Gustav Rau collection.

A rare linocut by Cyril Power (1874-1951) leads the sale of Modern & Contemporary prints at Bloomsbury Auctions in London on June 27.

Previously on loan to the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, this unusually large Jiaqing (1796-1820) period export porcelain punch bowl decorated with the Cholmondeley of Vale Royal coat of arms sold for £43,000 at nearby Saltney saleroom Byrne’s this week.

A large depiction of a magician commanded significant attention at Mellors & Kirk’s sale in Nottingham earlier today.

The Benson collection of early spoons was dispersed at Christie’s King Street last week. The highest selling lot was a Henry VI spoon with a Wodewose or wild man finial (one of only four known) which was secured by a UK private buyer on the phone for £70,000.

Is this Elkington kettle the earliest provable Christopher Dresser design for electroplated silver?

The Christopher Dresser Society will be launched at Teesside University on June 20.

The latest series of Russian art auctions in London set a combined hammer total of £42.7m to make it the most lucrative since the market peaked in June 2008.

Warwickshire saleroom Bigwood of Teddington, Stratford-on-Avon sold this mid 19th century whalebone cane for an extraordinary £27,000 at their latest sale.

‘Frieze Masters’ has acquired further gravitas following its successful launch last year by signing up several new heavyweight exhibitors for the 2013 event from October 17-20 in London’s Regent’s Park.

These tiny Chinese agate carvings jointly estimated at just £200-300 stole the show at Woolley & Wallis’ Asian series when they sold for 500 times the top guide in a packed saleroom in Salisbury.

The 2012 Olympics were the third to be held in London since the modern games were revived in the late 19th century, but in the Cotswolds market town of Chipping Camden they have an annual ‘Olimpicks’ tradition that dates back to the early 17th century.

The latest sealed-bid sale at Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst produced some real surprises – none more so than the Edwardian painted wood and wrought-iron seesaw pictured here.

A pencil drawing by LS Lowry (1887-1976) set an auction record for a work on paper by the artist this week, selling for £175,000.

Since ‘The Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair’ was forced to close after 75 years in 2009, the ‘Olympia International Art & Antiques Fair’ has taken up the mantle of the grande dame of London’s summer fairs.

The latest cameras and photographic equipment auction at Special Auction Services of Greenham, near Newbury included two daguerreotypes by direct descent through the family of Antoine François Jean Claudet (1798-1867), the property of his great-great-great-granddaughter.

Are the costs of running a gallery still necessary in the face of technology and a changing market? That will be the subject up for debate on Monday, June 10, at the Summer Olympia fair.