Art and antiques news from 2003

The regular specialist carpets and textiles sales at Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis (15% buyer’s premium) have shown what can be achieved in the provinces even in the most esoteric subjects, and the latest 560-lot event put together by June Barrett and Ian Bennett on April 10 underlined this. War in the Middle East seemed more likely than most to hit this market, but after a creditable 60 per cent turnover and a total just shy of £100,000, June Barrett was more than happy.

WHILST the rest of the antiques trade has taken a marked downturn, niche collecting areas remain largely unaffected. This was proved when the March 29 sale held by David Stanley Auctions (10% buyer's premium), specialist Leicestershire tool auctioneers, went on to be one of their best ever.

WILLIAM S. ‘Bill’ Bertoia, antique toy authority and founder of Bertoia Auctions in New Jersey, has died at the age of 52, after battling with cancer.

THERE were suppressed cries of irritation from the public at the May 8 sale held in Madrid by Alcalá Subastas as the Spanish State pre-empted all the important lots of the evening, including two newly-discovered paintings by Goya.

MAGRITTE'S Oiseau du Ciel, pictured right, commissioned by Belgium’s Sabena airline in 1965, was sold at auction in Brussels on May 5 for a triple-estimate €3.4m (£2.3m).

MORE than 200 dealers, mainly from New England, will gather at the Concert Field of Waterloo village, Stanhope, New Jersey over the weekend of May 17 and 18 for the state’s largest and oldest outdoor fair.

RARELY do organisers get together for a joint venture but David Smith of EW Services and Nick Cox of Abbey Art Deco Fairs did just that for the first Southampton Art Deco Fair, held at Southampton university on Sunday April 27.

AFTER more than two decades, the January LAPADA fair at Birmingham’s NEC has come to an end.

THE Hindenburg archive, which includes the famous Leica and accessories recovered from the wreckage by Fritz Deeg, the steward onboard the airship when disaster struck on May 6, 1937, is being offered by WestLicht on May 23 and 24.

NOT a fair that has in recent years maintained a very high profile but nevertheless the annual Buxton Antiques Fair has been running for nearly 40 years and is a lot better quality fixture than many better publicised ones.

BATTERSEA dealer Robert Young, the country’s only specialist in English and European folk art, holds his fourth annual Exhibition of Antique Folk Art from May 16 to 24 at his showrooms at 68 Battersea Bridge Road, London SW11.

Illustrated right is one of 15 chromolitho plates after pastel originals by Étienne Léopold Trouvelot that make up a scarce, complete set of The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings, the work of a keen observer and talented artist who spent the years 1872-74 using the 15in refractor at Harvard Observatory.

AN UNUSED photographic postcard showing the ‘The New White Star Liner Titanic... nearing completion: locked in the largest graving dock in the world, Belfast, February 1912’, was one of the more popular lots in a sale of books, cigarette, trade and postcards, plus autograph material, held by Acorn Auctions of Salford on April 15. It sold at £210.

ON Sunday, 18th May 2003, antiques enthusiasts can have their objects of virtue, jewellery and paintings appraised at Chilworth Manor, Chilworth, from 11:00am to 4:00pm.

AUCTIONEERS and valuers Tayler & Fletcher have merged with Chartered Surveying specialists, land and estate agents Humberts.

THANKS to intense internicine competition between major London dealers such as Richard Green and David Mason in recent years, the once-maligned name of Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1839) has become a byword for high prices at UK art sales.

Not such a pretty face, perhaps, but the artist was certainly worth a thousand dollars or more.

MOST numismatic material when offered at auction comes up in London. Sometimes this is not the case and then frequently a better-than-usual price is achieved.

WHILST it is widely acknowledged that the antiques trade is currently suffering a significant downturn, the silver market has been in the doldrums for much longer.

ALTERNATIVE investment might be too strong a word for it, but the current desperate state of returns in the stock market and other investment areas does seem to be having a positive effect at art sales, at least in Scotland.