Art and antiques news from 2001

Austria: This broken pane of glass formed a haunting reminder of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, which precipitated World War I.

Apart from a few isolated surprises for cult rarities, Sotheby’s and Christie’s recent wine sales on both sides of the Atlantic bore out this sense of a market in a state of suspended animation.

UK: THE Internet has, so far, hardly lived up to the initial claims made for it in the auctioneering world, but it does have its merits, as the Staffordshire firm Wintertons will attest.

USA: Star turn at Sotheby’s May 15 Contemporary sale in New York was Jeff Koons’ outrageously kitsch ceramic sculpture Michael Jackson and Bubbles.

UK: The Arcade series at Sotheby’s South (15/10% buyer’s premium) is where the lesser pieces that come into the Sussex rooms are offered, but there were some quality items among the 316 lots of Oriental ceramics and Eastern works of art of which 235 got away bringing a hammer total of £139,000 on April 11.

UK: At over 300 lots, Christie's South Kensington’s modern design auction on May 16 was a large and wide ranging gathering, (it would have been even larger had the auctioneers not withdrawn a 17-lot collection of Italian glass).

UK: MAINLY operating as a consultant these days, Robert Finan holds just two sales a year at The Old Ship Hotel in Mere, Wiltshire, giving him the time to assemble events which not only sell well – the 376 lots in April enjoyed a 91 per cent success rate and a hammer total of £187,325 – but are guaranteed to bring specialist bidders across a wide range of interests.

The loan exhibitions held by London jewellery dealers Wartski have become something of an event in the summer calendar. They focus on specific areas of the jeweller’s art and previously the spotlight has been turned on such subjects as the tiara in 1997, and two years ago an impressive show dedicated to the work of the Parisian firm Falize Frères.

Pewter is seldom seen in large quantities these days but Phillips’ Chester May 4 sale turned the clock back to the ’70s with an array of more than 100 lots.

UK: A striking amalgam of European form and Oriental decoration, this Meissen derived Kakiemon tankard was a rare hybrid, apparently one of only four in public record, and it consequently attracted worldwide interest at Woolley and Wallis’s sale in Salisbury on May 23.

SALES to overseas buyers now account for 63 per cent of business among members of the British Antique Dealers Association, according to BADA’s latest survey for 1999/2000.

OPENING up the auction scene to a wider audience has long been the aim of many involved in the business. Leading provincial auctioneers Dreweatt Neate are continuing to do their bit with a new series of saleroom talks aimed at the uninitiated.

A classic entry in Christie's South Kensington's Classic Arts and Crafts sale on May 2 provided one of the day’s top results – £6800 for this pair of 2ft x 12in (61 x 31cm) c.1900 stained glass panels decorated with mediaeval landscapes and a text inscription.

dmg world media have teamed up with Florida-based fair organiser David Lester to form a new art and antiques fairs group aimed at the very top end of the market.

It may look like a cross between an ancient rolodex and a tinpot bandstand but this is actually a rather stylish piece of late Victorian heavy industrial equipment.

OPENING up the auction scene to a wider audience has long been the aim of many involved in the business. Leading provincial auctioneers Dreweatt Neate are continuing to do their bit with a new series of saleroom talks aimed at the uninitiated.

UK: Somehow it still happens. After all the years of the Roadshow and other TV programmes on antiques, all the glossy magazine articles and all the newspaper columns, people still junk what seem obviously valuable materials, like this set of three Victorian stained glass panels.

THE London fairs season gets seriously underway on June 7 with the opening of the The Fine Art and Antiques Fair, which runs at Olympia until June 17.

In the past ten years, there have been only five or six first edition copies of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at auction, and not since 1991 have we seen a copy in the original boards*.

In the wake of the demise of Sotheby’s coin department, the good news is that one London auctioneer is making a comeback.