Art and antiques news from 2004

THE backbone of Bonhams’ September 3 car sale at Goodwood Motor Circuit in Sussex was the little-known but highly impressive collection of the late George Milligen.

WHILE Brian Haughton celebrates the botanical beauties of fine Chelsea, an altogether more prosaic, but nonetheless interesting, ceramic encounter is under scrutiny in Kensington Church Street.

RIGHT: sold for £3600 in a Rupert Toovey sale of July 13 was a 1485 edition of Abraham ben Me’ir ibn Ezra’s De navitatibus, printed by Erhard Ratdolt of Venice and illustrated with a single full-page woodcut and other letterpress diagrams.

THE Rates of Merchandise, that is to say, Subsidy of Tonnage, ...Poundage and ...Woollen Clothes, or Old-Drapery, as they are Rated and Agreed on by the Commons House of Parliament..., a 1660 copy in rebacked contemporary calf of the book of rates required by the passing of that year’s Act of Tonnage and Poundage, was sold for £1000 in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of June 17.

ANTIQUES never have a low profile in Harrogate, but over the next few weeks they will dominate the North Yorkshire town with three fairs in the vicinity and the numerous antiques shops and galleries making a special effort to impress the autumn visitors, traditionally many of them antiques tourists.

BULKY Victorian brown furniture may be the least attractive subject at many sales, but the most expensive entry at Keys (10% buyer's premium) 1386-lot Norfolk outing on August 3-4 was a 9ft square (2.74m) mahogany library breakfront bookcase.

THE recently published, enlarged and revised second edition of Peter McEwan’s indispensable Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture describes the Perthshire-born landscape painter Joseph Henderson (1832-1908) as “one of Scotland’s half-forgotten painters who deserves better recognition than he has hitherto received”.

THERE are few things so distinctly American in the book auction world as the collections of ‘Oziana’ that arrive in the salerooms with remarkable regularity.

IT IS ten years since well-known dealer Richard Gardner moved into Petworth, West Sussex. Today, even in a town known internationally as one of the most notable concentrations of antiques trading in the South of England, Mr Gardner can certainly be said to have made his mark.

WHAT is billed as the first ever selling exhibition of early Armenian art to be held in a commercial gallery will be mounted by Sam Fogg at 15d Clifford Street, London W1, from September 22 to October 15.

MY mention of Richard Gardner’s upcoming exhibition of Chinese antiques in Petworth, reminds me that the country’s biggest Asian celebration is not too far away. I am already starting to get information about this year’s annual Asian Art in London festival which will run from November 4 to 12.

ROBIN Butler’s new book on The Albert Collection: Five hundred years of British and European Silver, is a survey of one man’s 30-year dedication to assembling a collection. The owner commissioned Mr Butler to produce a survey of his mammoth and wide-ranging assemblage of over 700 pieces before his death, and, after he died, his widow wanted the task to be completed.

SWITZERLAND hosts a new international fair later this year with the launch of The Basel Ancient Art Fair from November 12 to 17 at the historic Wenkenhof, just outside the city of Basel.

GEORGE Jensen silver specialists The Silver Fund, who have shops in St. James’s, London and Madison Avenue, New York, have opened an outlet at Gump’s, San Francisco’s leading department store.

ENGLISH Heritage successfully bid £11,500 for a portfolio of 47 photographs of the exterior and interior of the Crystal Palace in a Dominic Winter sale of August 25.

GEORGE Jensen silver specialists The Silver Fund, who have shops in St. James’s, London and Madison Avenue, New York, have opened an outlet at Gump’s, San Francisco’s leading department store.

AFTER more than 35 years involvement in the art world, I have become rather blasé about a great deal of art, particularly Contemporary. However, last month the ‘wow’ factor returned, when as one of the judging panel for a wildlife art prize, I discovered the sculpture Urban Warrior, which is illustrated right.

A DEALER from Melbourne, Australia was one of the first through the doors, and certainly the most welcome visitor at Caroline Penman’s first Bury St. Edmunds Antiques Fair, held at the Athenaeum in the Suffolk market town from September 3 to 5.

ALTHOUGH the 616-lot sale held by Thomson, Roddick & Medcalf (15% buyer’s premium) in Edinburgh took place back on June 23, the sale highlight merits recording. This was the finely worked silver gilt globe cup, right, probably made in Germany.

OVERLAPPING with the start of the Biennale (September 15-19) will be the third annual Parcours des Mondes, a Left Bank gallery trail featuring 50 tribal art dealers.