Art and antiques news from 2003

NORTH Yorkshire organisers Galloway Antiques Fairs have events coming thick and fast this month and less than a week after shutting up shop at Dunscombe Park in their home county, they head north for The Scone Palace Antiques Fair, Perth from November 14 to 16. The popular Scottish fixture has been fully booked for some time with 33 exhibitors.

TWICKENHAM dealer Cliff Woods, who after two successful fairs at the Star and Garter in Richmond now puts events together as London Antiques Fairs, is on the move in 2004.

TIBETAN works of art are the speciality of Rossi & Rossi and they have come up with a stunning show to make their mark on Asian Art in London.

A quarter of a century ago, Christie’s sold an amazing doll’s house known as Titania’s Palace. This truly palatial mansion, more miniature museum than dolls’ house, was designed by Sir Nevile Wilkinson over 15 years from 1907-22, when it was opened by Queen Mary. Initially intended for Sir Nevile’s daughter, as the house and project grew it turned into a fund-raising publicity exercise for children’s charities.

Just as Concorde was an Anglo-French initiative, so the entente cordiale continues with its dismantling. Two auctioneers on either side of the Channel: Christie’s in Paris and Bonhams in London, are holding Concorde souvenir auctions devoted to technical elements and mementoes from the iconic aircraft. In both cases the sales will benefit the respective airlines’ chosen charities.

WITHDRAWN from sale at the eleventh hour, a recently-discovered portfolio of late 18th century topographical watercolours of Canada have been sold by private treaty to Library and Archives Canada and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.

In 2001, the year after the death of a local hero, Royal Doulton commissioned modeller David Biggs to design a character jug of Sir Stanley Matthews.

Basel fair shows its mettle: NOW established as a notable international fixture this year’s Cultura, to be held in Basel, Switzerland from November 14 to 19, is a month later and a day shorter than in the past, and looking at the exhibitor list of 55 dealers it looks stronger than ever.

Sotheby’s have appointed their current German chief, Philipp Wurttemberg, to succeed Laure de Beauvau Craon as head of Sotheby’s France. M. Wurttemberg will start in the job in January 2004, while continuing as managing director of Sotheby’s Germany, a post he has held since 1999.

THIS week sees a two-day international conference at The Savoy in London to mark the centenary of the National Art Collections Fund. Saving Art for the Nation, A Valid Approach to 21st-Century Collecting? runs on Tuesday and Wednesday, November 11 and 12, and will focus on whether it matters if works of art that were once the pride of British private collections go overseas and how they should be rescued for the nation if we believe it is important to keep them here.

WITH vendors finding greater confidence (and, in some cases, greater incentives) to offer blue chip works, both Christie’s and Sotheby’s mounted strong sales of Impressionist and Modern art in New York last week. Ahead of this week’s sales of Contemporary art, the two big players both improved substantially upon last year’s figures and posted artists records for Modigliani, Léger, Klimt, Jawlensky and Moore against a backdrop of solid levels of demand.

Deal cements southern network of rooms: Berkshire auctioneers Dreweatt Neate have become the latest and the largest business to join The Fine Art Auction Group’s rapidly expanding network of regional auction salerooms.

A thief who stole garden antiques worth over £34,000 in highly planned operations has been jailed for 15 months after being caught as a result of a Antiques Trade Gazette advertisement.

THE Chicago Clearing Corporation, the US traders in class action certificates, are to visit London again to buy and sell the vouchers issued following the Christie’s/Sotheby’s collusion case settlement.

THE Chinese-born, French-based artists Zao Wou-Ki and Yan Pei Ming, who both featured among the successes at FIAC Paris, were also in demand at the sale staged by Cornette de St-Cyr (20.33/11.96% buyer’s premium) at Drouot Montaigne on the evening of October 11.

PARIS FIAC, the main fair in the French capital for Contemporary art, took place from October 9-13 at the Porte de Versailles. FIAC has lost ground in recent years to Art Basel and its recent Miami offshoot, and the launch of the London Frieze fair has taken more international galleries away from it this year.

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NOTTINGHAM-based organiser of specialist Deco fairs Nick Cox, who trades as Abbey Fairs, has increased his stable to five since last December and he launches a new event at Kelham Hall, a gothic manor house near Newark, next year.

NOT far from their Harrogate base, Galloway Antiques Fairs mount their Duncombe Park Antiques Fair in the stately home of Lord and Lady Feversham in Helmsley, North Yorkshire from November 7 to 9.