UK

Fully booked with 90 standholders at the luxury Chateau Impney Hotel at Droitwich Spa in Worcestershire is Two C’s Antiques Fairs’ summer fair on Saturday and Sunday, June 17-18.

Readers old enough to remember using one at school may also recall Sam Cooke’s 1960 song in which he lamented “don’t know what a slide rule is for”. Today, few teenagers would know what one was.

Figural clocks combining novelty and automaton features were very popular in the 19th century, many of them being of French manufacture.

The prolific 18th century writer Daniel Defoe, of Robinson Crusoe fame, wrote poetically of the River Waveney which forms the 50-mile boundary of the Waveney Valley between Norfolk and Suffolk.

In 1953 Pan Am Airlines approached Rolex with a request for a watch that could show the time simultaneously in two different time zones.

A major work by French academy painter Edouard Joseph Dantan (1846-97), unseen for over a century, has emerged at an auction in Colchester.

The appeal of this 16in (40.5cm) tall French silvered bronze of a ballerina offered at Wotton Auction Rooms (21% buyer’s premium) on May 23, undoubtedly owed much of its success to its provenance.

ATG’s weekly selection of items on sale at auctions and dealerships.

Sensational results for Scottish author in Lyon & Turnbull sale recall a doomed family link...

Sue Norman is a practised hand at The Art & Antiques Fair Olympia (June 26-July 2). As an exhibitor at this west London event for 36 uninterrupted years, she knows the show well, is familiar with the crowd it attracts and approaches it strategically.

Norwich dealer James Brett vowed to continue dealing when he sold 300 pieces of stock at a Sworders sale in 2010. He has been good to his word and this year returns to Olympia for the first time in seven years. ATG spoke to Brett about his business and the wider market.

Victoria Borwick, president of the British Antiques Dealers’ Association, lost her Kensington seat following two recounts in the constituency at last week's General Election.

Criterion Auctioneers has opened a valuation office in South Kensington in the hope of snaring some of the business left by the closure of Christie’s in the area.

In recent years, Bonhams has uncovered several previously unrecorded English Golden Age clocks and at the sale of Fine Clocks on June 29 it will be presenting a recently discovered longcase clock by London maker John Fromanteel.

Six years after the Victorian Hastings Pier was gutted by fire, it reopened last year after a £14m redevelopment. The funding included £11m from the Heritage Lottery Fund as well as monies raised locally and regionally.

Harry Moore-Gwyn Fine Art brings a selection of 20 works on paper by English artist Sir George Clausen (1852-1944) to mark the 45th anniversary of The Art & Antiques Fair Olympia.

Asian art dealer Gerald Davison has taken a selling space in The Emporium in Berkshire, which he plans to run as well as his current space at Acreman St Antiques & Interiors.

MADAM – Laura Chester’s article ‘Rising to the Portobello challenge’ (ATG No 2295) accurately describes how the antiques section has been, and still is, the backbone of Portobello Market.

Figurative sculptor Christy Keeney from Donegal, Ireland, has been an exhibitor at the Earth and Fire International Ceramic Fair in Nottinghamshire for 16 of the 22 annual events held so far.

The three lots briefly described here were not among the very highest priced lots in a Forum Auctions (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of May 24 – but all brought record bids.