UK

In our continuing series looking through the keyhole of ‘bricks and mortar’ shops in 2017, ATG talks to Steven Kirby. He opened Messingham Farm Shop & Café in Lincolnshire earlier this year, which includes an antiques centre in an historic school house.

Exactly a week before Harry Rutherford’s ‘Camden Town’ painting sold in London (see separate Art Market story this edition), a small undated sketch, Female Nude, by his prolific mentor and tutor Walter Sickert (1860-1942) cropped up in Kent.

Dendritic agate – a pale chalcedony with treelike inclusions caused by traces of iron or manganese – is a relatively lowly stone but was a favourite of Russian jewellers in particular. Carl Fabergé used it in many pieces in a country where it is considered a stone of longevity, good health and prosperity.

A vintage, salvage and artisan market with lots of music, entertainment and speciality food stalls, as well as clothes and homewares, will be held inside and outside The Abbeydale Picture House in Sheffield’s Antiques Quarter on Sunday, July 9.

AD Antiques, run by British art pottery specialist Alison Davey, is selling this grotesque spoon warmer by the Martin Brothers.

A festival to help raise funds for the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire in London and their families will run at Windsor Racecourse on Saturday, September 23.

Whitford Fine Art’s ongoing exhibition Trans-Channel Crossing brings together works by four artists, two from the UK and two from Continental Europe, who lived and worked in both places after the Second World War.

Agatha Christie’s books were much in evidence at a Keys (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale of June 7-8, among them a 1921 first of The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

Kevis House Gallery’s exhibition 'Impromptu' features the works of Frances Hatch depicting musicians and dancers.

Browse & Darby’s ongoing exhibition of British and French drawings, prints and sculpture includes Edgar Degas’ c.1987 Danseuse Assise, a pastel and charcoal on paper mounted on card.

For more than 10 years after its donation, this Suffragette banner sat stowed away in a cupboard at a little charity shop in Leeds. On June 20 it sold at local saleroom Gary Don for £13,600 (plus 21% buyer’ premium).

Tiaras have enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years, particularly in Russia and the Baltic States where jeans and a diamond fascinator are de rigueur at informal high-society events.

Furniture and works of art dealer Martin Levy took a trip to the north Wales seaside recently.

Bonhams’ (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale in Knightsbridge on June 14 included a group of pieces attributed to the British Arts & Crafts jeweller and designer Dorrie Nossiter (1893-1977).

Like many who deal in antiques, the late dealer Andrew Cottrell zeroed in on his chosen niche with an all-consuming passion, accumulating vast knowledge (and stock) in the process.

Stealing all the headlines at Sotheby’s (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) Fine Jewels sale in London on June 7 was the £540,000, 26ct ’tenner’ diamond, bought by the vendor at a boot fair in the 1980s. However, among the 370 lots were items with more illustrious provenances.