Art and antiques news from 2001

PALLANT House Gallery in Chichester, West Sussex, has secured a £3.85m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to build a new wing.

USA: Show promoter Stella Show Management was still waiting last week to learn whether or not the 69th Regiment Armory would reopen in time for their January Antiques at the Other Armory Show but they were relieved to learn that the Piers are reopening.

First icollector close their London operation, now sothebys.com consolidate service in New York: Growing acceptance that the US antiques trade and collectors are happier to complete transactions online than their UK counterparts is illustrated by two major moves that have just been announced.

LAPADA, the Association of Dealers, have been preparing their members with a useful guide on how to adapt to the euro for when they conduct business in Europe.

IN DAYS when a 70 per cent selling rate is considered reasonable, a country auction enjoying a 90 per cent success rate obviously had something special going for it.

Furniture of all nationalities has been much in evidence in London over the past few weeks as late November/early December is traditionally one of the two periods in the year when the London rooms offer their best English and Continental fare.

Oak and other vernacular and country furniture formed a large slice of Sotheby’s Gwynn Collection and had some input into their R. A. Lee collection.

Jewellery is a classic Christmas seller and, combined with the current demand for Art Nouveau this hallmarked silver Charles Horner pendant, right, was always a likely seller.

What is reckoned by the auctioneers to be a new auction record for Russian furniture was set at Christie’s December 13 Continental furniture sale in London when this 22in (56cm) wide silver- and ormolu- mounted faceted cut steel centre table, c.1785-90, sold for £620,000 to a European dealer after a battle between seven telephones.

She lived by her pen, but died by her brush. If Charlotte Brontë had been remotely skilled as a portrait artist she might not have turned to literary characterisations.

Modern British in date, but blissfully unaffected by Fauvism, Cubism, Vorticism and just about every other ‘ism’ that was changing the face of Western art, Edgar Hunt (1876-1953) enjoys perennial popularity among picture buyers with more traditional tastes.

The more collectable the antique, the greater difference small details make to the final price. This general rule may explain the contrasting prices on these two glass bowls, all but identical in date, c.1800, form and origin, Cork or Waterford.

Sold for £90,000 as part of the November 15 Natural History & Travel sale at Sotheby’s was an album of 162 conchological watercolours put together c.1764-82 by Mlle. J.C. Xavery, a miniaturist of Dutch descent and probably the sister of the flower and landscape painter Jacob Xavery, who was working in Paris around the same time.

DEALERS stalling at Bermondsey Market have voiced further opposition to plans to redevelop the site as part of a £19m urban regeneration project.

AXA Art have sent their clients a guide to beating crime following a series of raids on galleries, culminating in a $350,000 theft from a Bond Street gallery in London at the beginning of December.

THE Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is to be the new home for Federico Barocci’s £1.3m drawing Study for The Institution of the Eucharist.

Christie’s will launch a new series of sales in the New Year aimed at creating a “one stop shopping experience” for dealers, decorators and particularly private buyers.

March Asian art fair to be first event: London-based organisers Brian and Anna Haughton have secured a site at the prestigious Lincoln Center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side as the venue for their New York fairs.

ICOLLECTOR are to close down their London and New York offices by the end of the year and will run their worldwide operation from Canada.

Sotheby’s board of directors has told its managers to meet with representatives of Alfred Taubman to discuss the possible sale of his controlling stake in the company.