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Illustrated with 117 detailed watercolours, an account of the different species of Agaric mushrooms growing in the Vienna region, complete with notes on their suitability for eating, was one of two mycological manuscripts in the natural history section of the Sotheby’s sale of May 7 (19.5/10% buyer's premium).

JUNE looms and the annual antiques season is due to get underway. Fairs are at the hub of proceedings and while Grosvenor House initiated this summer celebration of collecting and connoisseurship back in the 1930s, the latest addition to the June roster, artLONDON, has made its mark in a remarkably short time.

VETERAN organiser Donald Bayliss, who operates out of Ludlow as Continuity Fairs, reports a stunning response to his first International Antiques and Collectors Fair of Wales, which was launched at the Royal Welsh Showground at Builth Wells over the Bank Holiday weekend of May 3 and 4.

SOLD AT £600 (Temple) in the April 25 sale held by Y Gelli (15% buyer's premium) in Hay-on-Wye was a “much nicer than average” copy of the 1886, privately printed, Lahore first edition of Rudyard Kipling’s Departmental Ditties and other Verses. One of 350 copies of this tall, narrow production, printed on one side only, it was in the original wrappers but with the flap removed, leaving an uneven fore-edge to the upper wrapper.

AUCTIONEER George Kidner admitted after this April 16 sale (15% buyer's premium) that he wished he’d been able to offer more of that currently under-regarded commodity, brown furniture, because while routine silver remains pretty dormant and there was little good jewellery to be found, good quality furniture, along with ceramics, was selling well, sometimes spectacularly so.

FEW images conjure up the nail-biting adventures of John Buchan more than Richard Hannay’s flight across the grouse moors of Scotland in the author’s best-known story, The Thirty Nine Steps.

AN ARRAY of elegant objects sold mostly within estimates at the Celebration of the English Country House auction at Sotheby’s New York (20/12% buyer’s premium) on April 30 and May 1.