Art and antiques news from 2001

EBay are to provide the technology for customers to bid live online at sales held by hundreds of auction houses whose catalogues can be scanned on ICollector’s Website.

UK: “THAT is a heck of a lot of beverage, even for me,” said one dealer looking over the 64 lots of tea and coffee pots, some shown here, at Phillips (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) sale in Bury St. Edmunds on December 6-7.

FINE wine is one of those areas of the auction market which is bound to catch a cold if the world economy sneezes into recession or slowdown over the coming months. Higher than usual unsold rates at recent auctions in London and New York would suggest that buyers are already taking a more selective view of the wine market.

Sotheby’s Holdings have confirmed that eight per cent of their staff worldwide – around 165 employees – are to lose their jobs as part of a cost-cutting and restructuring programme.

HOPES of clarifying ownership rights over items sold at auction on the Internet have suffered a setback with the settling out of court of a potentially precedent-setting case.

YAHOO have decided to ban sales of Nazi memorabilia and other items promoting racism from their Website from January 10.

UK: THE Export Review Committee, which assesses whether outstanding works of art should be allowed to leave the country, has helped six such pieces stay in Britain in the past year.

UK: IF you stood fuming on the cocktail party sidelines over the festive season as your wife/husband got on famously with a lecherous member of the opposite sex, then something like this oversized (18in) metal syringe and vial which appeared at Christie's South Kensington on December 12, would have come in rather useful.

UK: BONHAMS and Brooks are to close their Manchester saleroom, compress departments in London and make 15 staff redundant in the first major shake-up since the two companies merged in September.

USA: A 137-lot collection of marine archaeological artefacts salvaged by the company Arqueonautas from seven wrecks on the reefs of the Cape Verde Islands rounded off Sotheby’s horological and scientific auction on December 19.

UK: Major new initiatives, including the introduction of a new criminal offence, are expected to come into force in the next few years to tackle illicit trade in cultural property.

UK: IN THE days when thousands of game birds would be shot in a morning on the moors by the likes of Walsingham and Ripon, it might have come as a shock to learn that no records of this gun ever making a successful kill existed, even more so when the target was many thousand times the size of your average pheasant.

THE flooded Welsh Marches in November didn’t augur well for sales but the Herefordshire auctioneers even managed to find a buyer for a highly unseasonal garden seat.

FRANCE: THREE French museums have become embroiled in legal controversy after harbouring works of art looted from their original owners during the Nazi occupation of France during World War II.

FRANCE: Following a two-year investigation, French police have rounded up a gypsy gang responsible for hundreds of thefts from châteaux and private homes, many in Normandy and the Paris area.

DMG have bought four antique shows in the US: The Original Miami Beach Antique Show, The Las Vegas Antique Jewellery Show, The September Miami Beach Jewellery Show and the November Miami Beach Antique Show.

UK: THE market in Guinness collectables continues to be as thirsty as that for the black stuff itself, to the point where buyers have to be on guard against forgeries of better known pieces.

PHILLIPS have announced that they are to merge with private treaty sale firm de Pury & Luxembourg, with Simon de Pury becoming chairman of the group and Daniella Luxembourg president.