Art and antiques news from 2002

Iron and clay in a white heat fusion as Philp brothers go Dutch with Spronken: In a new departure, London art dealer Richard Philp turns up the heat later this month and goes completely Contemporary.

GIVEN the fiscal disadvantages involved, Christie’s and Sotheby’s won’t usually be looking to Paris as a venue for sales of Modern art, but Christie’s (buyer’s premium 20.93%) had a modest French Collection of Post-Impressionist & Modern Paintings and Drawings on offer on September 28 that fared well enough, with 40 lots from 43 sold for a hammer total of €1.04m (£650,000) with seven per cent bought in by lot and just two per cent by value.

FEW would argue that Mayfair dealers Eskenazi are at the top of the international tree when it comes to dealing in Oriental art, and the November exhibitions at their Mayfair gallery are seen by a good many as the flagship selling show of the Asian Art in London celebrations.

PAUL Sumner, brought in as managing director to launch Sotheby’s Olympia last year, has announced his aim to make Lawson-Menzies the top auction house in Australia within two years.

Auctioneers Walker Barnett & Hill (buyer’s premium 15 per cent) were understandably celebrating their decision not to break up the contents of WTM Snape’s Tea and Coffee Merchants of Queen Street, Wolverhampton, right, when they were put up for sale on September 30.

FINE ART buyers may recoil from bloodied dead game or memento mori skulls on still lifes, but the rest of the market knows no such delicacy. Death and disaster, after a suitable lapse of time, become marketing opportunities, as was demonstrated at the Chiswick rooms of Harmers (15% buyer’s premium) on October 22 when their wide reputation as philately auctioneers brought them the remarkable Günther Heyd Disaster Mail collection from Germany.

EC fine Sotheby’s £13m – Christie’s escape penalty: THE US courts have given the go-ahead for compensation settlements to be paid in Sotheby’s and Christie’s $512m price fixing case. The green light came last week after the 90-day appeal period set by the US Supreme Court expired with no challenge to the ruling.

UK: THE RICS Antiques and Fine Arts Faculty is working on a plan to develop a masters degree for graduates who hold a degree not accredited by the RICS.

Edinburgh’s Royal College of Surgeons was the venue on the evening of October 29 for the sale by Thomson, Roddick and Medcalf of four important and original wallpaper designs by William Morris (1834-1896).

The fourth Frederick Parker lecture, held last week at Church House, Westminster, confirmed the potential of this event as an important annual fixture when Christopher Frayling, Rector of London’s Royal College of Art, spoke on the evolution of art and design education in Britain since the 1830s.

Few historic characters are guaranteed to generate more interest than the one-armed, one-eyed figure of Britain’s most celebrated admiral, Lord Nelson. Sotheby’s (19.5/10% buyer’s premium), Bond Street, 93-lot auction of Nelson memorabilia from the Alexander Davison collection sold on Trafalgar Day (October 21) to a room so packed that buyers had to spill over into an adjacent gallery.

The second-eleven sale that followed on from Christie’s main Islamic auction, was held in their South Kensington rooms on October 18, with 324 of its 417 lots changing hands, and saw the highest take-up of all the sales in this autumn’s series.

Seen here are two black ink silhouettes of Teeterree and Thomas Tooi that sold for £2500 as part of the book and ephemera section of an antiques sale held on October 5 by Finan & Co. of Mere.

The fastest growing area of the jewellery market, mourning apparel has become “hot property in the past 12 months”, says Jethro Marles of Bearne’s. Pointedly excepting the sort of heavy black jewellery produced in large quantities during the post-Albert period, he says that the material that has doubled in value over the past year is the earlier, more delicate mourning jewellery of the sort shown right.

The COINEX week of sales was kicked off by Dix Noonan Webb with a 1928-lot sale on a long October 8. This marathon took ten hours to disperse, making a total of £483,639; this, exults Chris Webb, was their best ever sale.

Pick of the Bligh relics sold at Christies King Street last month was the cup that he used to hold his meagre rations of bread and water, a coconut shell that bears his incised initials, the date April 1789 and, inscribed in ink around the rim, the words “The Cup I eat my miserable allowance of”.

THE next British Antiques and Collectables Awards ceremony will be held at the Dorchester Hotel in London on June 24 next year. Unveiling details of the scheme last week, the organisers revealed a number of changes in the award categories – a process they promised to continue last year as they assessed how each category worked.

UK: A man who stole two extremely rare atlases to remove maps and sell them individually over the Internet has been jailed for 15 months.

Thieves plagued West Country churches over the summer, stealing monumental brasses and, in one case, a misericord. Experts suspect the thefts are the work of one gang, targeting villages close to the M4 and M40. It is thought the thief must have at least one accomplice to act as lookout as several of the churches are popular with summer visitors.

THE Society of Fine Art Auctioneers have voted through measures to widen their membership and strengthen their influence as a professional body. Thirty five of the 36 members took part in the ballot – all of them voted to open up the membership to include valuers and individual associate members. Until now, membership has been restricted to auction firms.