UK

NOTTINGHAM auctioneers Neales have become the latest business to join the Fine Art Auction Group, parent company of the Dreweatt Neate Fine Art group of regional auctioneers.

A NEW auction house has opened in London’s West End focusing on Russian art, one of the fastest growing sectors of the world art market.

WHEN it comes to Beatrix Potter, they don’t come rarer than this previously unrecorded first trade edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

CHRISTIE'S have announced that discussions with the National Trust for Scotland concerning a private sale of Dumfries House and its contents have ended.

IN September 1878, as it became clear that the Newbury Borough Fire Brigade was suffering from a lack of men and equipment, around 20 determined tradesmen decided to take matters into their own hands and to form a volunteer fire brigade. After some debate by the town’s Watch Committee, the auxiliary brigade won a majority approval.

WEST Midlands Police have arrested three people from Birmingham in connection with the theft of Staffordshire figures from the Antiques for Everyone fair after the items were spotted on eBay.

SOUTHAMPTON Institute has two reasons to celebrate this week: its newly adopted status as a university college, granted on November 1, and the awarding of a number of prizes to its fine arts valuation students.

THE international Asian art community descended on London from November 4-12 to battle for the best quality Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Southeast Asian material the major houses and dealers could muster during Asian Art in London.

VALUABLE Native American artefacts were stolen in a smash-and-grab raid on an auctioneer’s car in Surrey last week. A substantial reward is being offered for the safe return of the stolen items.

THE Bourne casket, a Restoration needlework casket that failed to sell when offered by Netherhampton Salerooms earlier this year, has been sold by private treaty to the Lancashire Museum Services.

LAPADA will return to The Centaur at Cheltenham Racecourse for their 2005 Autumn Antiques and Fine Art Fair following last month’s inaugural event there. It will again be organised by Ingrid Nilson.

THE well advertised sale of Railwayana & Military Memorabilia was held in H.J Pugh & Co’s Ledbury salerooms on the 13th October and was another successful auction.

POLICE investigating the theft of Tang and Yuan dynasty jewellery and body ornaments from the British Museum on October 29-30 believe the raid could be linked to the theft of Chinese jades from the Victoria and Albert Museum earlier last month.

NEXT spring Caroline Penman launches a new fair at Chelsea Old Town Hall in King’s Road, London SW3. It will be called The King’s Road Antiques Fair and will run from March 11 to 13.

DMG Antiques Fairs have put up £350,000 for a new building at the Newark and Nottinghamshire Showground and secured the venue for another 20 years.

THE Chicago Clearing Company, the US firm trading in auction house class action certificates, will be in London again this week.

H.J. PUGH & Co. of Ledbury (5% buyer's premium) will be offering a selection of Railwayana, Military Memorabilia and Other Collectables at auction on Saturday 13th November.

JAGUAR Fairs say they will launch an event to fill the gap now created between the Swinderby and Newark fairs.

BACK in April in Antiques Trade Gazette No 1633, we pictured and discussed an unusual Derby porter mug decorated with industrial scenes of two Mancunian foundries which sold at Bonhams in London for £3800.

THE current fashionable status of antiquities and the charm of animal subject matter proved an irresistible combination for collectors last week when Christie’s offered the late Leo Mildenberg’s collection of ancient animals. The two-day dispersal of the German-born collector’s Noah’s ark, in London on October 26 and 27, totalled just over £3m.