Art and antiques news from 2003

FRANCE: ON July 4 Chayette-Cheval (17.94% buyer’s premium) devoted an entire sale to clocks, watches and related items, achieving a hammer total of €571,000 (£394,000).

Well, it’s happened at last! The first £1million sale of campaign medals and awards (ODM) has taken place. It took Dix Noonan Webb (15% buyer’s premium) 1155 lots to disperse this assemblage. The total was £1,013,510 and this is the hammer total so there was no fudging with the buyer’s premium to jack the total over the magic number.

Craft and Conflict: Masonic Trench Art and Military Memorabilia by Mark JR Dennis and Nicholas Saunders, published by Savannah Publications in association with The Library and Museum of Freemasonry. ISBN 1902366166. From bookshops or from the Freemasons Hall, Great Queen Street, London WC2B 5AZ at £8.75 including p&p. Phone orders on 020 7395 9329 (Mon-Fri).

FRANCE: The 162-lot Piasa (17.94/11.96% buyer’s premium) furniture sale on June 25 was 70 per cent sold by lot and brought €1.8m (£1.24m) hammer, with a three-drawered Louis XVI citronwood-veneered bureau plat, with painted metal decoration of arabesques and blue and white medallions, evocative of the work of Pierre Macret (active 1756-85), selling for €340,000 (£234,000) – helped by its leather top with crowned N and imperial corner eagles.

WE frequently comment on the way in which successful dealers have to chase business wherever it may be and a case in point is Mayfair dealer Alistair Sampson who will not be seeing much of his Mount Street, London W1 showrooms once autumn is upon us.

Windsor Chairs: An Illustrated Celebration by Michael Harding-Hill, published by the Antique Collectors Club. ISBN1851494294 £25hb

Miller’s Price Guide 2003: Antiques Under £1000, published by Miller’s. ISBN 184000603X £16.99pb

Cullercoats: A North-East Colony of Artists, by Laura Newton with Abigail Booth Gerdts, published by Sansom & Company with the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. ISBN 1904537014 £19.99 sb

JUST 365 More Days Till Artiade – The Olympics Of Contemporary Art ran the baffling headline of a missive that I received last week. It transpires that Artiade is no less than a grand international art exhibition which will accompany the XXVIII Athens Olympic Games next year.

The Collection of Louis Vivien, a Paris bookseller who opened his shop in Rue des Ecoles in 1905, swiftly specialising in the aeronautical world after attending the inaugural Salon Aéronautique of 1908, provided Tajan (20.33% buyer’s premium) with yet another new sale theme – Aviation – on June 21.

NEW York’s Chinese Porcelain Company hold their autumn exhibition Recent Acquisitions, Fall 2003 from October 9 to 25 at their elegant galleries at 475 Park Avenue at 58th Street. Some highlights from the exhibition will be displayed on their stand at the International Art and Antique Dealers Show at Manhattan’s Seventh Regiment Armory from October 17 to 23.

Working in a newsagent’s shop in Flint, Wales, a generous grandmother decided to buy her grandson a complete set of the five-inch tall Star Wars figures when they originally came onto the market in 1977. She bought one complete set for her grandson to play with but kept a second set back in case any of the figures became lost, hiding the toys away in a cupboard where they remained for more than 25 years.

A biscuit box is probably not every young child’s idea of an exciting toy, but to collectors of tins, advertising and tinplate, the Huntley & Palmers Tribeck lorry tin, 1937, 83/4in (22cm), in Bonhams Knightsbridge’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) trains, toys and diecast sale on July 15 was the most coveted entry.

Hawk-eyed dealers scouring the London rooms in July for Asian sleepers would have been rewarded by a trip to Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) Asian Decorative Arts 586-lot sale on July 10.

DUELLING pistols often attract considerable interest and one of the top lots in this 1162-lot Welsh sale at Anthemion on 16 July was a pair of pistols by Wogden & Barton, 1795-1803.

Furniture can usually be relied upon to be the biggest money spinner at provincial auctions but some good quality consignments of reasonably estimated and fresh-to-the-market ceramics furnished this tri-annual fine sale at Bearne's on 1-2 July with some of its most interesting and most commercial entries.

CLUBS: A ROCKY ride perhaps, but Lyon & Turnbull certainly had the best selection of clubs this year and the one real ace to give the market a fillip – a long-nose baffing spoon by George Daniel Brown of Blackheath and St Andrews, c.1850-60.

THE latest artistic preference among Australia’s wealthy middle classes appears to be large-scale canvases by John Kelly (b.1965). Born in Bristol, he became an Aussie in the year of his birth when his parents emigrated to Melbourne and throughout his artistic working life, he has immersed himself in Australian iconography but he is particularly celebrated for his paintings of cows.

£36,000 private bid on cabinet shows underlying market strength: BRITISH auctioneers have long looked enviously across the Irish Sea where there still seems a wealth of high-quality furniture coming onto the market from private sources to be welcomed not merely by the trade but also by confident and well-heeled private bidders who have been the dominant force these past ten years and more.

Between 1781-90, when Fidelle Duvivier was at New Hall he created some of the factory’s finest wares, painting in a highly characteristic style figure and landscape compositions. However, as Geoffrey Godden wrote in his Guide to English Porcelain: “His pieces are so rare that I wonder what on earth he did with himself when he was employed at the factory!”