Art and antiques news from 2003

The market for cricket memorabilia is dominated by Australian and UK collectors who battle every summer for the best entries in London’s major June and July sporting sales. This year Melbourne-based Ludgrove’s (15% buyer’s premium) joined the major houses and held a Literary, Historical and Sporting sale on July 29 at St James DeVere Cavendish Hotel.

It is such an obvious thing to do that it is surprising that there not similar dispersals to that of the Colin Adams collection of English pennies (1797-1970) at Spink (17.65% buyer’s premium) on July 23. It required 375 lots to cover this collection and so we are furnished with a price guide for what is surely a popular if relatively elementary passion.  

The Stuart Sutcliffe archive received a lukewarm reception at Bonhams Knightsbridge, but Sotheby’s Olympia (20/12% buyer’s premium) are hoping a stamp design by his famous art college friend, John Lennon, will generate more frenzied bidding in their 201-lot Rock ’n’ Roll and Film Memorabilia sale on September 24.

FOR 40 years, the Suffolk family concern Tudorose Ltd has been involved, directly or indirectly, with the antiques world. The operation is very much in line with current trends, for the company creates high-quality reproduction antique furniture, designs contemporary furniture, restores furniture and completely renovates interiors, among other things.

Rock and Pop memorabilia: Memorabilia relating to The Beatles may routinely command the highest prices in the Rock and Pop collectors’ market, but Bonhams Knightsbridge (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) gambled that the Fab Four’s enthusiasts would also be interested in the 95 lots relating to Stuart Sutcliffe, the fifth Beatle, in their 505-lot entertainment auction on July 29.

THERE will be fairs aplenty in Harrogate this month, generally of the standfitted type one associates with that elegant Northern venue. First up, however, is an unashamed showground event from September 5 to 7 when Lincolnshire organiser George Taylor, who operates as Grosvenor Exhibitions, stages his Great Northern International Antiques and Collectors Fair at the town’s Great Yorkshire Showground.

As part of the on-going development of the Gazette website, antiquestradegazette.com is now asking users to log in when using the site. Access to the site and all its services from Lot Find to Price Guide remains free of charge.

SAVILE Row suits will be swapped for shorts and shirts when dealers and auctioneers meet for a showdown on Friday. But saleroom rivalries will have nothing to do with it as lots make way for shots... at goal.

CULTURE secretary Tessa Jowell has extended her deadline for deciding on what sum the National Gallery should pay for The Madonna of the Pinks.

THE company appointed to administer the Sotheby’s/Christie’s price fixing settlement in Europe have apologised for the error on the compensation claim forms which has delayed the process. The Garden City Group, who sent out the forms last month, transcribed the compensation amounts in dollars rather than pounds sterling. The amounts were listed in the section of the form titled Pre-Printed Transactions Supplied by Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

Sotheby’s have acquired the inventory and reference library of H.P. Kraus, the venerable New York dealers in books and manuscripts, which they will sell in a series of auctions this autumn.

FOR the second time, the crowded sporting calendar at the city’s Millennium Stadium has forced the Cardiff Antiques and Collectors Fair to relocate to nearby Cowbridge.

WITNEY specialist in fine period furniture David Harvey, head of W.R.Harvey & Co, was recently re-elected for a second term as mayor of the Oxfordshire town (having had one year out of office) but is not cutting down on his busy trading schedule, starting with manning his customary stand at the 97th Chelsea Antiques Fair from September 17 to 22.

MADRID organisers IFEMA stage what is arguably Spain’s top fair, Feriarte, at the Juan Carlos I Exhibition Centre in the Spanish capital from November 22 to 30.

INCREASINGLY antique dealers make the crossover from being purveyors of fine, venerable objects of intrinsic quality to selling objects which are part of a whole look.

FROM September 25-30 some 34 leading dealers from France, Italy, England, Sweden, Canada and the United States will gather at The Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue, New York City for the fourth International Art and Design Fair.

WELL-established, and increasingly a summer favourite, the South Cotswolds Antiques Fair will be mounted by Cooper Antiques Fairs at Westonbirt School, near Tetbury in Gloucestershire this weekend from August 29 to 31. There are three Westonbirts a year but, with nigh-on 70 exhibitors, this is the biggest.

AN INTERESTING and historic show is coming up at London’s Plus One Plus Two Galleries, 161-163 Seymour Place, W1, from October 8 to November 1 when Classic Romantic Modern combines work from the 1930s designer Jean-Michel Frank with the accomplished contemporary architectural artist Carl Laubin.

Though no direct relationship has yet been established, there are very obvious similarities between the manuscript map reproduced right and one of the more significant maps in American history, the engraved map, right lower, found in the History of the Expedition under the Commands of Captains Lewis and Clark... in 1804-06.

Goldsmiths Hall, the home of the venerable City of London Livery Company, is the venue to check out the latest in contemporary silverware and jewellery next month. Billed as ”the Chelsea Flower Show of the silver and jewellery world” and celebrating its 21st anniversary, the fair will feature 90 exhibitors representing the cream of British talent from these fields with a wide range of work spanning cutting edge to more traditional designs.