On July 14 in a packed saleroom at Sotheby⁳, the earliest surviving manuscript for a novel by Jane Austen †The Watsons †sold for $1,601,218, triple its presale high estimate, following extended bidding among four bidders.

⁉t⁳ like shows used to be in the old days †great antiques, good friends and good food,†remarked a dealer from St Michaels, Md., who has attended the June Festival of Antiques every year since its inception in 2007.

History has long been made in the small city of Corning, N.Y., nestled amidst the mountain ranges that run through the mid-western portion of this state. From the humble beginning of one of America⁳ most important glass factories, the Steuben Glass Works in 1903, to the foundation of the Corning Museum of Glass in 1951 and to the recently developed Corning Inc. product that is fitted to the finest flat-screen televisions on the market today †affectionately known as Gorilla Glass® †Corning, the city, museum and the company, has always been synonymous with the world⁳ most exquisite glass. Today, in clebration of its 60th year as a cultural and learning institution, the Corning Museum of Glass is once again setting the standard for exquisite glass with two remarkable special exhibitions, ⁍t Washington and Pairpoint: American Glass from the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties,†on view through December 31, and ⁅ast Meets West: Cross-Cultural Influences In Glassmaking in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,†open through October 30.

Now in its second year, the annual Marion estate sale, organized jointly by boyhood friends and early antiques dealers Frank McNamee of Marion Antique Shop and C. David Glynn of Turkey Creek Antiques in Citrus, Fla., attracted a large crowd June 26.

Continuing its commitment to global outreach and cultural exchange, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute opens the exhibition ⁌a Collection Clark à Giverny, de Manet à Renoir†at the Musée des impressionnismes as part of the international tour of masterpieces from its collection of Nineteenth Century European paintings.

An early Seventeenth Century funerary bust of eminent botanist and physician Dr Peter Turner taken from St Olave⁳ in London, following a WWII blitz of April 17, 1941, is back at the church after being missing for over 50 years.