UK

DORSET auctioneers Cottees are under new ownership and have bucked the trend of rising charges in the saleroom by cutting both their buyer’s premium and vendor’s charges.

Four Beatrix Potter watercolour Christmas cards, recently discovered in a Wiltshire attic, will be sold by Highworth, Swindon auctioneers Kidson-Trigg on September 20. The cards have been consigned by descendants of the original recipients, Elizabeth (1888-1977) and Elinor (1886-1979) Lupton.

Underscoring a strength of demand for rhinoceros horn pieces seen in the recent specialist Asian sales, Chiswick Auctions achieved a house record on July 18 when this rhinoceros horn libation cup carved with carp feeding on a waterlily sold to a Taiwanese dealer at £46,000 (plus 15 per cent buyer’s premium). The 18th or possibly 17th century vessel was discovered by auctioneer William Rouse on the sideboard of a modest home in Hanwell, one of West London’s less fashionable suburbs.

After almost 150 years as chattels auctioneers, Bruton Knowles have sold their art and antiques division to former department head Simon Chorley.

The fourth annual ATG-sponsored football match between the Dealers and the Auctioneers will take place at the Bank of England sports ground in Roehampton on Friday, September 1.

FRIENDS, relatives and colleagues have been shocked by the death of Richard Allen, former Director of Halls fine art auctioneers of Shropshire, in a road accident last Thursday. The tragedy occurred as Mr Allen was returning from a viewing.

M1, one of the most sought-after UK registration numbers, set a new world record price for a car number plate when it sold for £300,000 at Bonhams’ Goodwood Festival of Speed sale of Sports, Competition and Collectors’ Motor Cars and Automobilia on July 7.

Enigmatic, elusive, rarely seen, and classified as mad – but that’s our Dadd!

IT set a British auction record for a Shakespeare First Folio and made the highest price ever seen for a printed book at Sotheby’s London (20/12% buyer’s premium) – but hushed voices at the back of the saleroom were suggesting that the £2.5m hammer price represented pretty good value for a near-perfect copy of the most important book in English literature.

THIS year's RICS conference will be in Cambridge from Friday to Sunday, September 15-17. More details to follow, but block out the dates in your diaries now.

An early 19th century boxwood and bone Napoleonic prisoner-of-war model of the Third Rate 74-gun HMS Mars fired a shot across the bows at Hampton & Littlewood's (15% buyer's premium) Maritime Sale in Exeter on June 21 when it set a new house record of £60,000.

THIS summer's Kensington Church Street Open Evening on June 29 proved a notable success for the many visitors who enjoyed the hospitality and company of the street's many dealers.

EAST Anglia's top fairs circuit, Lomax Antiques Fairs, has been sold to John Harbottle, a regular exhibitor at Lomax events.

There was nothing dull or predictable about the coin sale at Spink on June 29 when an expectant crowd gathered to witness the sale of one of the rarest of English Medieval coins: the gold Double Leopard florin of Edward III which was minted for only a few months in 1344.

More suited to the wall than the bed and more a piece of social history than a functional textile, this 19th century appliqué felt coverlet reaped the rewards when it sold for £24,000 (plus premium) at Kerry Taylor auctions in association with Sotheby's on June 26.

Record turnover at London flagship sales but the buzz of the 1980s has gone

A panel of judges, including interior designers Alidad and Kit Kemp and representatives from World of Interiors and Homes & Gardens, deemed Guinevere Antiques to have the best stand of The Summer Fair, Olympia.

Compiled in the second half of the 15th century, the Fechtbuch of Hans Talhoffer (fl. 1435-82), the most celebrated and experienced fighting-master of the age, is a veritable encyclopaedia of medieval combat.

Given today’s obsession with celebrity, especially Royal celebrity, it was always on the cards that Christie’s sale last week of Princess Margaret’s jewellery, silver and other personal belongings was going to make much more than the £2m-3m predicted.