UK

The Orient played a significant part in Tennants’ (Buyers premium 15%) success in the Yorkshire Dales.

The main head-turner at the Hove sale held by Scarborough Perry Fine Arts (15% buyer’s premium) on December 2-3 was this striking 19th century Italian, gold-mounted tortoiseshell snuffbox with a finely executed micromosaic lid, right.

Richardson & Smith, Whitby, November 18 Buyer’s premium: 12.5 per cent Furniture produced the top lots in this routine 717-lot North Yorkshire auction, topped by an oak dresser and a plate rack with a shaped crest over four tiers.

IN CONTRAST to Sotheby’s and Christie’s, who usually offer Japanese arms and armour in Japanese works of art sales, Bonhams (19.5/10% buyers premium) include theirs as a section in militaria auctions.

Despite a year that saw no recovery in prices for brown furniture and problematic levels of demand for ‘bread and butter’ pictures and table silver, several of the UK’s top provincial auctioneers enjoyed record turnover figures in 2004.

ANDREW McIntosh Patrick, director of The Fine Art Society, is to sell his celebrated collection of metalwork by the Victorian industrial designer Christopher Dresser. Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull will conduct the projected £400,000 sale on April 19.

THE V&A has appealed for help from the art and antiques world in tracing the eight bronze plaques thought to be worth a total of £450,000 stolen in the third raid on the museum in three months.

SOME changes are planned for this year’s Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair. Britain’s top fair opens with the private preview on Wednesday June 15, thereby reverting to the historically successful Wednesday preview after seven years opening on a Tuesday.

There is a mistake in the Sotheby's Furniture and Interior Decorator sale advertisement in the 8th January issue of the Antiques Trade Gazette (No. 1671). The sale and view is being held at Olympia and not New Bond Street as stated.

Oxfordshire pottery dealer John Howard, who specialises in Staffordshire, has an exceptionally busy 2005 lined up.

SOME months ago I reported that Reindeer Antiques from Northamptonshire were planning a Reindeer Antiques Centre. That is now up and running and officially opened to the public on January 2.

HAVING had to drop plans for a fill-in fair between Swinderby and Newark at RAF Wymeswold, Jaguar Fairs will now launch one at the Lincolnshire Showground instead.

THE Westpoint Antique and Collectors Fair will revert to being a two-day event when it kicks off Devon County Antiques Fairs 24-date programme for 2005.

A Christie’s South Kensington sports sale of November 23 saw a bid of £5500 on a programme for the 1897 F.A. Cup Final at Crystal Palace in which Aston Villa completed a League and Cup double by beating Everton 3-2.

Executed in the 1890s, when Beatrix Potter was working for the greetings card firm Hildesheimer, this little ink and watercolour drawing was last seen at auction in London about ten year ago, but on December 1 it came back to Christie’s South Kensington and sold for £25,000.

A 90-year-old member of the Wine Label Circle has lost 70 items from his collection during a break-in at his East Sussex home. The wine labels were the only items taken in the theft.

A militaria section at Lawrences’ (15% buyer's premium) October 28-19 sale featured a quality, privately entered, 12-lot cache of weapons which suffered not one casualty and racked up a £30,000 total.

KNOWN as Twelve Months of Flowers, a famous set of plates engraved by Henry Fletcher after original floral paintings by Pieter Casteels was originally produced as a sumptuously illustrated nursery catalogue of some 400 different species of flowers.

A more academic ivory carving than anything at Kidson-Trigg’s sale was this unsigned but fine quality 6 3/4in (17.5cm) portrait bust, right, offered at the Banbury rooms of Holloways (15% buyer’s premium) on November 30.

The continuing strength of the privately-fuelled market for unusual or quality toys in good condition saw Wallis & Wallis of Lewes boast healthy selling rates by volume in their specialist November and October toy sales.