Art and antiques news from 2004

A group of Cosway-style bindings by Rivière were sold as part of the library at a July 21 country house sale held by Lyon & Turnbull at Jordanstone in Alyth, Perthshire, and illustrated here two of those lots.

HIGH-profile dealers Reindeer Antiques, who have a shop in Kensington Church Street, London W8 and a large complex in Northamptonshire, are to convert part of the latter into the Reindeer Antiques Centre.

SHAME on veteran organiser Cindy Mainwaring for mentioning the ‘C’ word when the summer is barely out.

HOW many dealers, I wonder, dread, rather than dream of, their business area being “discovered”? Long before Covent Garden became a trendy mecca for international tourists, one of the familiar attractions for habitués was London dealer Arthur Middleton’s distinctive shop in New Row, full of early globes and all sorts of antique scientific instruments.

LAPADA have abandoned Claridge’s as the venue for their London fair but plans for the launch of their LAPADA Autumn Antiques & Fine Art Fair are well advanced and well received by members of our largest trade association.

THE Fergusson show at Alexander Meddowes, coincides with Edinburgh’s exhilarating annual Festival, which brings with it not only hundreds of incredibly diverse theatrical shows but a good sprinkling of art exhibitions too.

THE three-session, 630-lot jewellery section of Tajan's (20.33% buyer's premium) August 3-4 sale, with a chirpy attendance of 80-100 throughout, met a more convincing response than the Modern art, bringing €2.7m (£1.8m) hammer, including an aftersale €145,000 (£96,670) for a grey-gold ring with a fancy yellow, rectangular 29.57-carat diamond (estimate €200,000-250,000).

THE Victoria and Albert Museum’s main autumn exhibition, opening this month, is devoted to a retrospective of Christopher Dresser, the pioneering designer who anticipated many of the major design styles of the 20th century. It is timed to coincide with the centenary of his death in 1904.

THIS exquisite George III silver gilt inkstand, right, by John Houle was commissioned for the phenomenally wealthy William Harry Vane (1766-1842), the first Duke of Cleveland, whose estate and personal assets were valued well in excess of £2m.

AFTER four years of organising fairs at the Bournemouth Pavilion, the Hampshire-based organisers Valerie and Ken Sleeney, believe the wealthy town and hinterland has more to offer.

THE seventh annual Asian Art in London week will take place this year from November 4 to 12, with a launch party at the Victoria and Albert Museum on November 5.

ANDREW Morris is to be the new chief executive of Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre Group, taking over from Barry Cleverdon who retires next year.

SPECIALIST auctioneers, Ocean Liner Auctions have been instructed to sell what they consider to be the largest and finest collection of fixtures and fittings from RMS Olympic since the vessel was broken up almost 69 years ago.

FOR four generations, and more than 150 years, the Stinton family of porcelain painters were represented at the Worcester factories.

“NICE house, shame about the pictures,” must have been many people’s sentiment when they opened the catalogue of the July 21 sale at Bonhams Knightsbridge (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) of the contents of Marwell House, Hampshire. This fine, if rather rambling, red-brick Georgian house had, for many years, been the home of Dorothea, Viscountess Kelburn, the daughter of Sir Archibald Lyle, whose family made a fortune out of shipping and sugar refining.

SHAME on veteran organiser Cindy Mainwaring for mentioning the ‘C’ word when the summer is barely out.

CONGRATULATIONS to Middlesex-based organiser Sue Cruttenden who this month celebrates 25 years of her fortnightly Sunbury Antiques Market at Kempton Park Race Course, Sunbury-on-Thames.

THE owners of Chicago’s Navy Pier have contracted Pfingsten Publishing to produce a new annual art and antiques event replacing two major fairs at the Windy City’s top venue.

A NEW freelance auctioneer service has been launched in the UK and has been taking its first commissions.

ONE of the pioneers of the vogue for Japanese and Chinese design in the 1870s, Joseph Theodore Deck was also one of the first 19th century potters to explore Isnik floral designs and colour schemes. It was during his efforts to replicate the Turkish palette that he perfected the turquoise glaze that came to be known as bleu de Deck, or Deck blue.