UK

The Simon Hall collection of cookery books, to which were added lots from other sources, was offered by Dominic Winter on January 27.

Appearing at Frank R. Marshall’s (15% buyer’s premium) sale at Knutsford, Cheshire on January 11 and selling at £720, was this 10 x 7in (25 x 18cm) oil-on-canvas, right, by Augustus Edwin Mulready (fl1863-1880 d.1886). Framed, mounted and indistinctly signed, it showed a characteristic subject for the artist, and was estimated at £200-300.

Mallams, Cheltenham. January 6 - Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent WILD animals and ferocious reptiles were major features at this 430-lot Gloucestershire sale.

NO more the enfant terrible of the Brit-Art world, shark man Damien Hirst is quite at home in salubrious Knightsbridge, especially after he walked away with £11m from his famous Pharmacy sale at Sotheby’s.

A CONFERENCE addressing the special problems facing the art and antiques trade will be held at the Earls Court Conference Centre in London on Monday, May 16.

Edinburgh dealer John Dixon of Georgian Antiques has joined the LAPADA board of directors.

This pair of Hanoverian pattern tablespoons offered at Woolley & Wallis, right, is of interest not just for the unascribed and possibly Scottish marks but for the scratched initials RP and the lightly engraved iconography of a crown, a cardinal’s hat and the name Henry Stuart.

At Sandown Park Antiques Fair on February 15, Paul Braithwaite on stand HW5 is offering this early 20th century surgeons’ fitted box, made by Mayer & Meltzer, surgical instrument makers in London, for £385.

The final Dix Noonan Webb (15% buyer’s premium) 2004 sale in London, on December 14, was a massive 1610-lot affair with a diversity of offerings. The total hammer take was £282,905.

THE first afternoon session of a January 20-21 antiques sale held by Lawrences of Crewkerne presented more than 400 lots of books, amongst them a good collection of private press books featuring the wood-engraved illustrations of David Jones.

Christie's King Street, 20 January, Buyer's Premium: 20/12%.The most expensive piece from the 26 lots offered from Endsleigh, the Devon cottage designed for the 6th Duke of Bedford was this 6ft (1.8m) wide carved oak side table designed c.1801-14 by Jeffry Wyatt, the architect responsible for the main decorative scheme at Endsleigh, and made by local cabinetmaker John Williams of Exeter.

Charterhouse, Sherborne, December 10, Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent TWO fine timepieces led this Dorset sale. Top price by a long way was the £21,000 bid for an unusual brass skeleton clock designed for a Victorian railway industrialist.

The £1.7m price tag needed to keep the Macclesfield Psalter in the UK has been found.

Thomson Roddick & Medcalf. Buyer’s premium: 15 per centTWO large private consignments accounted for half the lots at Thomson Roddick & Medcalf’s Edinburgh sale and had the predictable effect of pulling in bidders from south of the Border.

ELR, Sheffield, December 10, Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent Changing fashion was the talking point at ELR’s recent quarterly antiques sale. While the market for traditional furniture remains difficult, collectable names from the 20th century were in high demand.

Business as usual was the message from Camden Stables following the sale of the north London market to the clothing tycoon Richard Caring. A price of £40m was quoted in the financial press.

The student section of the British Antique Furniture Restorers’ Association will hold their annual conference at Oxford and Cherwell College, Oxpens Road, Oxford on March 14.

PICTURES which belong to a very specific collecting area are frequently in much greater demand than those of comparable quality that lack esoteric appeal.

AFTER more than 41 years, veteran silver dealers Hymie and Shirley Dinerstein have left West London’s Portobello Road.

FOR its seventh London staging, The Watercolours and Drawings Fair leaves its long-time home at the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly, and moves deeper into Mayfair to The Royal Academy, 6 Burlington Gardens, W1 where it will run from February 3 to 6 with a charity preview on the evening of February 2.