Art and antiques news from 2004

BIDDING was noticeably selective at Adam's (15/12.5% buyer's premium) May 19 outing, with an unusually high unsold rate by lot and relatively little to tempt buyers in the pictures, silver and ceramics sections. Furniture, and particularly Irish furniture, was a different matter, with wealthy Irish private buyers battling with both the home and London trade for a handful of high-quality pieces, coming fresh to market from different local sources.

AUCTIONEERS David Lay (15% buyer's premium) of Penzance can rely on strong local demand for home-grown collectables such as Newlyn copper and Troika pottery at the bi-monthly sales.

BONHAMS Chester hosted a 484-lot collectable ceramics and applied arts sale on April 27.

THE controversial ‘Anglo Saxon’ cross shaft, once hailed as a major discovery by London dealer Rupert Wace, but now blighted by academic opinion, failed to attract a bid when offered by Sotheby’s New York on June 9 with a $30,000-50,000 estimate.

NO self-respecting specialist auction of marine paintings would be complete without at least one example from the brush of that most prolific and popular of late 19th century marine painters, Thomas Bush Hardy (1842-1897).

LAPADA have introduced an interest-free credit scheme to the portfolio of benefits on offer to members.

FLORIDA art fair Palm Beach Contemporary is to be known as PalmBeach3 for its next staging at the Palm Beach County Convention Center from January 13 to 17, 2005. The name has been chosen to reflect the new three-part structure of the event.

AN instrument maker from Manchester, who switched careers four years ago to become a clockmaker, has won a £13,250 Queen Elizabeth Scholarship to attend a specialist clock restoration course.

FAIR organisers Clarion Events are negotiating a management buyout from Earls Court Olympia, the group just bought by private property fund St James Capital in a £245m takeover.

OVER the last couple of years, a number of auctioneers have been complaining that lesser-name Victorian watercolours in the sub-£500 range have become the weakest of all areas at picture sales, sometimes to the point of having no market at all.

CONTROVERSIAL artist Tracey Emin (b. 1963) might be outraged by public “sniggering” after the loss of her works in the Momart’s London warehouse fire, but the art world has lost much more than her infamous tent. To many, much more disconcerting is the loss of the large cache of major paintings by Patrick Heron, RA (1920-1999).

GOOD-quality mahogany and oak furniture took most of the better prices in Mitchells' (15% buyer's premium) 1566-lot May 13-14 auction which totalled £325,000.

THE expansion of Bloomsbury Auctions continues apace with the announcement that they are moving into the chess and games market.

THE large sums of money rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia collectors are prepared to part with for a complete set of Beatles autographs inevitably means the market is peppered with fakes. The watertight provenance of an early Beatles extended play record, Twist and Shout, Parlophone, 1963, signed to the sleeve by the Fab Four, was key to its success at Biddle & Webb’s (15% buyer’s premium) 511-lot sale of toys and juvenilia in Birmingham on May 21.

ALTHOUGH there were no blockbuster entries in Richardson & Smith's (10% buyer's premium) 841-lot May 20-21 outing, with pictures securing most of the top prices, the highlight was a kingwood, amboyna and burr marquetry inlaid étagère by Gillows of Lancaster.

DERBYSHIRE dealer Nick Gent has taken over the London Ceramics Fair from Fred Hynds of Wakefield Ceramics Fairs and formed Prestige Ceramic Fairs to stage specialist events.

SOLD for $1300 (£730) in a May 20 sale held by Freemans of Philadelphia was a set in original wrappers of all eight issues of The Savoy (1896) with its cover designs and other illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley.

EMMA was the leading lady in a May 19 sale held by Dreweatt Neate of Newbury, an 1816 first of Jane Austen’s novel selling at £6000. Catalogued as bound in both contemporary half red morocco and later boards, it retained the half title to Vol. III only and showed a little spotting and staining. It also bore the booklabels of Gilbert Bethune of Balfour.

ONE of the Thirty-One Original Etchings of Views of Norfolk by John Crome, a portfolio collection issued in 1821 by Freemans of Norwich, that sold for £3200 to an American collector in a Christie’s South Kensington sale of April 29.

IN an unfinished craft binding of crushed red morocco with full doublures, the lower cover with borders of inlaid blue and gilt pointillé cornerpiece, a paper copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer of 1896 was sold for £17,000 to an American dealer in a May 6 sale held by Bonhams.