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Specialist items, including a collection of five nut crackers and novelty silver entries, encouraged buyers to travel to Herefordshire to bid in this 1080-lot sale at Brightwells on 11 June, which was 70 per cent sold by lot.

Sales by members of the Paris Compagnie des Commissaires-Priseurs (i.e. all Paris auctioneers bar Christie’s and Sotheby’s) fell 15 per cent in the first half of 2002 to €290m (£187m), as compared to the first six months of 2001.

English blue and white pottery may not be the most fashionable ceramic collecting area, but the 144-lot Patricia Davis collection offered in the June 11 morning session at Sworders Essex rooms suffered only 22 casualties.

SINCE the 1920s, Shell have commissioned paintings from key British artists for Shell county guides, calendars and school wall charts. In order to raise funds to create a new exhibition space in the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu for the earlier works from the company’s collection, Shell decided to sell 193 lots dating from 1950-1990, most of which had never been seen in public before, at Sotheby’s Olympia (17.5% buyer’s premium) on July 4.

JUST as the world’s top golfers were teeing off for The Open at Muirfield last week, Scotland was celebrating another hole in one. Grants totalling more than £2m from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the National Arts Collection Fund, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, St Andrews and private benefactors meant that the Scottish National Portrait Gallery could acquire the nation’s most important golfing painting, Charles Lees’ (1800-1880) oil on canvas, The Golfers (1847).

THE first industry-wide survey of the secondhand jewellery market puts the value of trade at several hundred million pounds a year.

FOLLOWING a high of over £220 per troy ounce in mid-June, the market price has steadily declined to plateau at a nominal £202 per ounce, report Michael Bloomstein (Precious metals) of Brighton.