Art and antiques news from 2002

The music sale held by Sotheby’s on December 7 contained two exceptional manuscripts – both of them presenting examples of the composer’s best loved works.

TWO LOTS were bid to £800 in the 150-lot book and map portion of this Hampshire sale on 6 February at George Kidner, which put them some way ahead of most others on the day.

There were peaks and troughs in Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) annual 166-lot Art Nouveau sale, February 12, but little appears to have changed since their last auction foray into this field, in April 2001.

Topping this 740-lot sale on 25-26 January at Raymond Inman's was a pair of Royal Worcester two-handled vases painted by Charles Baldwyn, one of the most distinguished Worcester designers, with images of swans on a river with raised water reeds to one side and flying swans to the other.

Against the background of the London Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales both the major auction players held specialist Surrealist evening sales – Christie’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on February 4 and Sotheby’s (20/15/10% buyer’s premium) on the following evening of February 5.

Christie’s South Kensington’s Ski sale, held annually in February, was doubly topical this year, coinciding with the Winter Olympics.

TWO well-known organisers, Towy Antiques Fairs and Sue Ede, have joined forces as the Towy Ede Partnership to launch a new programme of fairs. The first date will be the Newbury Antiques Fair, a weekend event to be held at the Newbury Racecourse on June 15 and 16.

FLOOD waters threatened to sink a £1m antiques emporium just weeks after its official launch. The flowing lines of antique and interior design dealers Mansers’ new showroom on the outskirts of Shrewsbury echo those of an ocean liner, but Mother Nature added the final touch when the River Severn burst its banks last Tuesday, leaving the new building seemingly afloat in the turbid waters around the historic Shropshire county town.

While it is almost impossible to sell some routine furniture at present, Keys specialist Paul Goodley echoed the traditional view that attractively pitched guidelines are the key to success.

ELEVEN top dealers make their debut at this summer’s Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair and it is clear that the organisers of our most prestigious event have taken the opportunity to beef up their fine art quota.

NOT the priciest offering at Exeter auctioneers Hampton & Littlewood (15% buyer’s premium) on January 30, but undoubtedly the most interesting was this early 19th century automaton right, made from bone.

USA: The annual general sale of good quality classical coins (446 lots) hosted by the triumvirate of Baldwins (London), Markov (New York) and M&M (Washington DC) took place in the Big Apple on January 17.

FRANCE: Camard reported “strong progress” in demand among trade and private buyers for 20th century ceramics last year. They returned to the field this year when they offered a “panorama of 100 years of history of ceramics” at Drouot on January 25.

The conviction of New York antiquities dealer Frederick Schultz on charges of conspiracy and trading in stolen and smuggled artefacts has sent shockwaves through the trade.

Sotheby’s have responded to the threat of legal action over alleged price fixing at UK auctions, playing down the claims of legal firm Class Law.

THE judgment in the £1.5m claim against Mayfair art dealers Agnew’s could have important repercussions for the rules and conventions on attribution in UK art sales.

FRANCE: TOBACCOLOGY may not be the word on everybody’s lips in these smoke-free days but it was the official theme of the offbeat sale held by Rieunier-Bailly-Pommery at Drouot on January 28.

BOOKS played a fairly minor part in the first Newbury antiques sale of the year at Dreweatt Neate on 30 January – one that raised in excess of £1.5m, a record for the Berkshire saleroom – but they did get the proceedings under way, and the very first lot in the catalogue, a misbound and now disbound and browned copy of Love in a Village, a comic opera as performed at The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden... showed the way in selling for a double estimate £200.

In 1805, William Blake was commissioned by Robert Harley Cromek to make a set of 40 drawings to illustrate Robert Blair’s poem The Grave, 20 of which Cromek proposed to have engraved by Blake.

FRANCE: Pictured right is a restored 18th century two-part fountain basin, with a veined red marble shell topped by a white stone lion head, which sold over expectations for €25,000 (£15,500) at Tajan on January 30