Art and antiques news from 2003

THE Office of Fair Trading are investigating the activities of a London-based listings firm whose mailshots to the trade have sparked complaints.

TED Adams, who has died aged 72, helped Antiques Trade Gazette Coins and Medals correspondent Richard Falkiner set up what is thought to have been the first independent courier service in the UK.

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.

LAUNCHED 18 years ago with the interior decorator in mind, a reminder that the thrice-yearly Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair is still going strong and will be held this week in its trademark marquee in Battersea Park, London SW11 from January 14 to 19.

CURRENTLY decorators’ darlings, the distinctive and different antique dealers David Grocott and Ian Lemon, who work out of Chelsea’s Core One under the name Plinth, are taking a stand at the Spring Fine Art and Antiques Fair at London’s Olympia from February 25 to March 2.

Fully coloured as intended, and presumably under the direction of the author/publisher, the uroscopic woodcut reproduced right is found in an internally fine copy of Ulrich Pinder’s Epiphanie medicorum… printed in Nuremburg in 1506 and is intended to show different shades of urine.

There will be three newcomers among the 100 or so exhibitors at this year’s BADA Antiques and Fine Art Fair, which will be held at The Duke of York’s Headquarters in Chelsea’s King’s Road, London SW3 from March 19 to 25.

Contemporary Decorative Arts, Sotheby’s annual showcase for new craft and design, gets underway for its seventh successive showing next month. For a week from February 13-21, the Bond Street rooms will be given over to the latest in furniture, lighting, ceramics, jewellery, glass, silver and textiles by over 50 designers from round the world, all for sale.

Susie Cooper’s (1902-1995) long career as a ceramics designer spanned 70 years and her output ranged over many styles including 1920s lustre, colourful blocky Deco, curvy shapes and sgraffito decoration.

THE VERY rare copy of the first Beano comic of 1938 that sold for an auction record sum of £6875 in the December 3 Comic Book Postal Auctions sale was featured on the front page of Antiques Trade Gazette No. 1568 and can also be seen in the selection of lots illustrated right.

NEW York-based Stella Show Management launch a new event this spring with an antiques and gardening show, a combination which has taken off at a number of American locations and has attracted a number of English dealers.

One of the most significant and comprehensive sales of Victorian paintings for some time is to take place next month when The Forbes Collection of Victorian Pictures and Works of Art goes under the hammer at Christie’s King Street. The sale of more than 350 lots comprises almost the entire collection, which was assembled over three decades by one man, Christopher Forbes, of the well-known American publishing family, and was housed until now at Old Battersea House.

One of the most unusual and interesting pieces in Sotheby’s December 11 sale of Continental furniture was the 19th century English boulle cabinet shown right set with a rare 17th century Dutch mother-of-pearl and hardstone inlaid panel depicting a Vanitas subject.

THE Society of Fine Art Auctioneers have agreed to accredit the Southampton Institute’s BA (Hons) Fine Arts Valuation degree as an approved entry route to professional qualification within the Society.

LAUNCHED next September, a new biennial fair organised by France’s national dealers’ association, the Syndicat National des Antiquaires, will be called Le Salon du Collectionneur – Paris.

The Print in Italy: 1550-1620 by Michael Bury, published by the British Museum Press in September 2001. ISBN 0714126292 £35pb

LONDON: THERE are just a few places left for the one-day Fakes and Forgeries seminar at Goldsmith’s Hall in the City on January 22. Silver expert and dealer Alastair Dickenson will be the guest speaker. The other speakers include Dr Robert Organ – Superintendent Assayer and Tim Swann – Senior Assayer, both of the London Assay Office.

A watercolour drawing by Renoir and inscribed by Emile Zola has been discovered by Bonhams in the vault of London diamond merchants I. Hennig & Co. The c.1877 drawing had been lost for almost 20 years and is thought to be one of the few recorded works by Renoir intended for book illustration.

One of the 2003 saleroom highlights in Paris promises to be the auction of the Collection of André Breton (1896-1966). The 5000-lot collection, consigned by Breton’s daughter and granddaughter, is expected to bring around £20m and will be sold in 24 sessions under the Calmels-Cohen hammer at Drouot from April 1-18.

Full militarisation of a collapsing German economy towards the end of the First World War resulted in the country’s famous toy makers struggling for raw materials. Richard Steiff, director of the eponymous bear factory, was forced to find an alternative fabric to mohair, an unobtainable luxury, so that production could continue in 1919.