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UK: TOP price of Christie’s South Kensington (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) sale of toys and dolls on July 29, 1999 was the £1200 which secured this painted wood Noah’s Ark, complete with numerous carved and painted wood animals, which had been estimated at £600-800.

UK: LURKING in the depths of a maritime sale at Henry Aldridge & Son (10 per cent buyer’s premium) in Devizes, Wiltshire, on July 21, was this badge, the most expensive Edwardian badge ever sold at auction.

UK: Rival venture rumoured Five senior staff at Phillips Edinburgh, including the manager Nick Curnow, have resigned and left the company to pursue new interests.

UK: POP star John Lennon adopted a number of different guises throughout his career in the public eye – likely lad, mystic, cartoonist, photographer, songwriter – and likewise it now appears as though he was just as much of a chameleon in his sartorial life.

GERMANY: ARTLINK have conducted what is being claimed as the first live online art auction. The sale – of International Young Baltic Art – took place on the evening of Saturday, August 7 at Rostock in Germany.

UK: THE chief beneficiary of Lloyds’ July 31 sale of London Underground railwayana in Putney was a pet pig called Charlotte, whose owner, John Shirley, paid the auction’s top hammer price of £1000 for the front end of a Type 59 Northern Line train, intending to house his animal in it.

UK: PHILLIPS Cardiff are among the three rooms which will soon close, but they held a good sale on August 4 where this pair of English 17th century brass candlesticks, 61/2in (17cm) high were consigned to the rooms from a private source.

US: TIFFANY stained glass authority Alistair Duncan was convicted on Thursday by a New York federal jury on all five counts of trafficking in Tiffany windows stolen from cemetaries and mausoleums.

UK: PHILLIPS are continuing the restructuring of their regional sales business with the closure of three more auction rooms: Glasgow, Cardiff and Retford will all shut by the end of September and be replaced by offices for dealing with clients.

GERMANY: INTERNET art auctioneer Artnet.com which floated on the Frankfurt exchange in May, have denied a claim by magazine Boerse Online that their main shareholders are selling their shares.

UK: JAPANESE lacquer is a complex form of decoration requiring the painstaking application of layer upon layer and incorporating different materials to build up the finished pictorial surface.

UK: A MAN charged with stealing part of the treasured collection of a rugby legend from Sotheby’s faces a retrial after the jury failed to reach a verdict.

UK: THE billiard cue as we know it today is a relatively recent addition to the sport: the billiard mace – with a curved and tapered grip and a block tip – was used from the earliest days of the game in the 16th and 17th centuries right up to the turn of the 19th century.

UK: AUGUST may be the quietest time of the year for the majority of the UK trade, but any business this week for the auctioneers and shopkeepers of Cornwall is likely to be overshadowed by a cosmic obligation on Wednesday morning.

UK: DESPITE a catalogue entry which cited this walnut, rosewood and marquetry centre table, 3ft 1in (95cm) wide, as William and Mary and later and an estimate of £2500-3500, it was competed to £43,000 plus 15 per cent premium at Sotheby’s South in Billingshurst on July 20.

UK: A commercially appealing example of Edwardian sporting art at the Leyburn salerooms of Tennants on July 16, this 2ft 61/2in by 231/2in (77.5 x 60cm) oil on canvas Left in Charge by Phillip Eustace Stretton, signed and dated 1904, had been consigned in untouched and original condition from a Harrogate deceased estate.

WALTER FEILCHENFELDT, the Swiss picture dealer, has taken over as the president of CINOA, with Henry Neville of Mallett, former BADA chairman, as vice president.

UK: THIS early 18th century flintlock pistol possesses a combination of characteristic features which should leave the curious in no doubt as to its country of origin.

AT LEAST a dozen of the world’s top dealers appear to have lost goods as a result of a series of elaborate and sophisticated swindles carried out by a gang operating out of Northern Italy during the past nine months.

US: CHRISTIE'S have decided to place British expertise at the helm in New York with the promotion of their London managing director, Edward Dolman, to managing director of Christie’s in America.