Christie's decision to shut down lines of credit, even to its longest-standing and most trusted clients, was the main issue raised by dealers showing at the Winter Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Olympia in London this month.

"I've had an account with Christie's for twenty-five years," said London-based specialist textiles dealer Joanna Booth, "but they never told us they were changing their policy on lines of credit. You only get this news when you come to [pay for and collect] your objects."

With all eyes on the marquee in Regents Park where the sixth annual Frieze contemporary art fair opens on Oct. 16 in an atmosphere of nervous apprehension [full report to appear soon on Auction Central News], it was easy to miss one or two other newsworthy items developing elsewhere in the capital.

Over at the recently opened SaLon Gallery in West London, work by young British contemporary artist Sarah Maple has been incurring the wrath of The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), according to UK broadsheet the Daily Telegraph.

The oil painting in question, titled Haram, shows the artist, herself a young British Muslim, wearing traditional Islamic dress and cradling a pig. According to the Daily Telegraph report, Mokhtar Badri, a spokesman for MAB, objected to the work on the grounds that Muslims are "taught to keep their distance from pigs because they are unclean". The Telegraph item said that MAB "plans to visit the SaLon Gallery to demand that it remove Maple's painting" when the exhibition opens on Oct. 16. Understandably, SaLon Gallery increased its security provision ahead of the opening.

On Sept. 16, controversial British artist Damien Hirst drove a chainsaw through established conventions governing the art trade by selling £70.5 million ($127 million, inclusive of buyer’s premium) worth of new art at Sotheby’s in London. Sidestepping his dealer agents – White Cube in London and Gagosian Gallery in New York – Hirst consigned directly to Sotheby’s, which also broke the rules by agreeing to auction literally new artworks.