As a result, three members of staff in the King Street department – Adam Chadwick, Alison Bridger and Meghan Melvin – have left. The centralised department at CSK will comprise Simon Andrews, head of 20th century furniture and design, Daniel Gallen, head of Continental decorative arts and Nicolette White, head of posters. New appointments for head of British decorative arts (to replace Michael Jeffery who left at the end of last year and is now at Woolley and Wallis of Salisbury) and a junior specialist have been completed and will be announced shortly.
“It is logical at this time, for many reasons, to run a single department in London out of South Kensington,” a company spokesman told the Antiques Trade Gazette. The thinking behind the changes seems to be that the duplication of content between the King Street and Paris sales, where higher end Continental material, especially Art Deco, provides much of the financial mainstay, was not economical with the pool of material spread too thinly.
Christie’s revamp decorative arts policy
CHRISTIE’S have unveiled some major changes for their 20th century decorative arts policy in Europe. The auction house have closed their King Street department and are concentrating all their London activities in decorative arts at South Kensington. They also want to develop and raise the profile of this field in France with regular dedicated auctions in Paris under specialist Sonja Ganne.
