Art and antiques news from 2003

d?f[lungu in Africa: Art from the Colonial Period, 1840-1940, by Michael Stevenson and Michael Graham-Stewart. ISBN 0620304626. Available from Thomas Heneage Art Bookshop, 42 Duke Street, London SW1Y 6DJ Tel: 020 7930 9223 Price £30hb and £22sb

A Rolls-Royce & Bentley sale held by Bonhams at Towcester Racecourse on June 21 included a number of sales brochures, catalogues, handbooks, manuals, etc. amongst the automobilia.

Burleigh: The Story of a Pottery by Julie McKeown, published by Richard Dennis Publications. ISBN 0903685809. £45hb

Bowrings, India’s only specialist fine art auction house, is to close after just two years of business to allow for lengthy court proceedings against the Indian government. The auctioneers have filed a writ against the Indian Ministry of Culture’s regulatory body ASI (Archeological Survey of India) and the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) disputing the demand that they need a licence to operate and sell antiquities.

DOUBTS over the second New York Fall Fair have been fuelled by a delay in publishing the list of exhibitors. In early June when he announced that the opening night preview party for the October 14 to 20 event at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York would benefit Manhattan’s Frick Collection, organiser Lorenzo Rudolf, vice-president of Florida-based International Fine Arts Expositions, promised a roster of 100 international dealers to be announced on July 1.

FROM August 21 to October 26, The Wallace Collection in Manchester Square will host what they bill as the first ever exhibition in London devoted entirely to Regency and Victorian glass.

FRANCE: July and August are periods of considerable saleroom activity for the coastal regions of France. The calendar here lists over 80 different sales scheduled for the next few weeks around the Channel, Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts but a much more detailed survey of these regions and forthcoming events is available in a special six-page section of this week’s Antiques Trade Gazette. If you wish to obtain a free copy call ++ 44 (0)207 6600.

LAST-minute efforts to persuade the Government to amend legislation that could prove damaging to the honest trade in antiques looked set to pay off as the Antiques Trade Gazette went to press.

LAPADA chief executive John Newgas has revealed that a membership survey shows now is the time to review the association’s fairs programme. Mr Newgas had already set out changes in May after LAPADA and fair organisers Centrex failed to reach agreement on the future of the association’s January fair, spelling an end to the event at the NEC in Birmingham.

LOOKING for the next big thing in art? You can choose from over 350 hand-picked artists, in a variety of media, whose wares are on show this month at Fresh Art, at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London N1.

ERIC Knowles crowned his fourth year as the chairman of the British Antiques and Collectables Awards with another grand dinner and ceremony at the Dorchester in London hosted by Miller’s. The event, which took place on Tuesday last week, paid tribute to excellence across the country among dealers and auctioneers.

JUDGING by the sales of photographic images at the recent artLONDON, the public appears to be warming to the genre as a serious art form. A further test of its acceptability may be gleaned until July 26 at Cork Street’s Hirschl Contemporary Art, with the showing of 10 or so photographs (£1000-1800) by Sian Bonnell, whose work is represented in the V&A and Houston’s Museum of Fine Art.

Lisa Watson is one of the young silversmiths featured in Silver Sparks, an exhibition of 47 examples of cutting-edge silver and jewellery made by students and former students of the Bishopsland Workshops in Oxfordshire that are on show at the Gilbert Collection in Somerset House, London WC2 until August 31. Her silver and felt jewellery and accessories can be seen at the show but like several of the other participants, examples of her work can also be bought at the Gilbert Collection Shop.

Apart from their specialist commemorative medal sale, Morton & Eden (15% buyer’s premium) busied themselves with a general 1025-lot sale on May 21 which made a total of £592,877. This fine result was coupled with a reasonably small failure rate of just 12 per cent. This is about the norm for more specialised events but hard to achieve in a general sale.

LONDON: Police are urging London’s silver and jewellery dealers to be particularly vigilant after a spate of thefts, or attempted thefts, in the West End. In the space of ten days at the beginning of June three shops were hit by thieves including Kenneth Davis Works of Art of King Street who had a Russian gold box by assay master Dmitrii Il’ich Tverskoi stolen by a man at about 4.15 pm on Friday June 13.

A watercolour and drawings sale held by Bonhams on June 10 included a small group of E.H. Shepard illustrations from the estate of the late Jean Ames, who as Jean Gourlay had befriended the artist during the late 1930s and early 1940s, prior to his second marriage, and though the saleroom was non-committal on the matter, it is possible that these versions were specially made by Shepard for Miss Ames.

Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg have opened a new London office in Mayfair to replace their recently vacated Grosvenor Street premises. The new premises at 26-27 Albemarle Street are, say the company, a more cost-effective alternative to Grosvenor Street.

Netherhampton House, a wonderful Queen Anne home in Salisbury, was the venue for Duke’s English Country House sale on 16 June. Rented from the Pembroke estate since 1990 by dealer and collector John Parnaby, the elegant stone property operated as both a home and a showroom for Mr Parnaby’s business, Victor Mahy Antiques, specialists in 17th and 18th century furniture and works of art.

ONE place nowadays where the decorator regularly meets the antique dealer is in the garden, and as more and more decorators look outdoors, an increasing number of antique dealers are also tripping down the garden path.

THERE are few better ways of spending a sunny June afternoon than browsing around the gardens and castle of ’s-Gravenwezel, 10 miles outside Antwerp, as a guest of its owner, the legendary Belgian antique dealer and interior decorator Axel Vervoordt.