Art and antiques news from 2001

UK: NINETEENTH century genre paintings with strong narrative and moralising elements have not been the strongest performers at auction in recent years.

UK: MARCH was a busy month in London and successful with it. On the 15th, Spink (15 per cent buyer’s premium) sold the definitive collection of Tudor silver coins formed over several decades by Roger Shuttlewood.

There was the familiar wide mix and flash of quality at this Dales auctioneers’ weekly sale, where the top price came from a piece over the Pennines – an 18th century yew wood dresser base that had originally graced a pub in Blackpool.

EIRE: WITH the traditional Irish sales due in London next month, many an eye was on the Dublin sale held by James Adams (15 per cent buyer’s premium) on March 28 to see how pictures were selling in their native land.

UK: A CHANNEL Islands collection formed by Sir Martin Le Quesne occupied the first 108 lots of the catalogue issued by Bloomsbury Book Auctions for their March 15 sale.

FRANCE: THIS bronze Leaping Ram, right, from Ancient Greece (c.400BC), bearing a remarkable resemblance to the emblem of Derby County FC, sprang to a triple-estimate Fr250,000 (£24,300) at Piasa on March 20.

In a Bloomsbury Book Auctions sale reported earlier (Antiques Trade Gazette No. 1485, April 21, 2001) I mentioned a bid of £2800 on a 1930 (German text) Cranach Press edition of Hamlet, but at Sotheby’s on April 5, as part of the John Gielgud Collection, a copy of the English text version made very much more than that.

Golf in the USA PICTURED here is a remarkable wooden golf club that was the highlight of a specialist sporting and golf sale held in Miami last month.

ORIENTAL rug expert Simon Crosby had launched a global appeal after his cleaning woman made off with part of his collection.

AFTER a slow start, this Henley event picked up with the furniture section in which an early 18th century 2ft 5in (74cm) wide oak chest of three drawers with original handles, shot past its £300-500 estimate to sell at £3100.

UK: Sworders, Stansted: A mammoth 1200 lots made up the March dispersal by the Essex auctioneers and there were some real quality pieces among them, both in the ceramics and the furniture.

UK: THE best ever attended sale at Newent Auction Rooms (5 per cent buyer’s premium) on the March 30th – auctioneer John Parrott frankly believed numbers at the March 30 event were boosted by foot-and-mouth cancellations elsewhere – was led by this pretty Queen Anne walnut desk.

UK: ARTS Minister Alan Howarth has become increasingly active in placing temporary bans on the export of works of art

To what extent the bouyant market for Gaudy Welsh pottery would become deflated if every American collector realised it was actually made in Staffordshire, England, not Wales, is a pertinent question – given the misty eyed view of Scottish/Welsh/Irish history from the other side of pond.

THE star of this 476-lot Kent sale arrived late and direct from a tractor shed where it had languished for a decade.

UK: SMALLER than usual at 412 lots – the Sussex floods earlier in the year having distracted potential vendors – the March sale at Henry Adams’ Chichester rooms was nevertheless strong on quality, which is what buyers want.

Sotheby’s find a warm welcome in Wales with record bid and active museum interest UK: THE strong, and occasionally extraordinary, demand for Celtic art, both Scottish and Irish, has been a feature of the art market for years and has warranted specialist picture sales devoted to those country’s painters.

UK: A NEWLY established firm of provincial auctioneers are broadening the scope of their business by launching a two-day ceramics fair in London in June.

THE Portable Antiquities scheme, which protects archaeological finds in the UK, has announced a 50 per cent rise in reports of discovered artefacts for the past year.

Few businesses can boast the sort of charitable contributions of Tomlinson Antiques, the furniture wholesaler of Tockwith, North Yorkshire.