Art and antiques news from 2004

ALTHOUGH April saw no headline auctions in Belgian salerooms, several firms in both Brussels and Antwerp were in action and achieved some significant prices.

MAYFAIR dealers in things tribal, unusual and exotic, the Gordon Reece Gallery, are currently holding one of their periodic selling exhibitions of antique Chinese furniture at 16 Clifford Street, W1.

AS if there are not enough fairs in June in London, busy Sussex organiser Caroline Penman has decided to launch another, but at least this is far from the centre of town and does not tread on the toes of any of the established events.

MORTON and Eden continue to make great strides considering how short a time they have existed. On April 22 they held their first sale abroad – in Milan in collaboration with Sotheby’s. Indeed, that firm is descended from the now closed Sotheby’s coin department.

IN this busy spring season – the busiest for some years – Spink’s have been batting hard. March 31 saw a fine sale which netted £626,750. But, not content with that, they fielded another 632-lot sale a fortnight later, on April 15. Again this sale referred mainly to British and related coins. However, the first 131 lots were devoted to the ancient world.

SALES of Victoria Cross groups continue to set new auction records.

ON The Wall is the name of a new fair aimed at the contemporary art market which will be launched from September 29 to October 3 at the Grand Hall, Olympia.

SALES of antique and decorative carpets traditionally accompany London’s Islamic series and all three participating salerooms offered selections last month. Christie’s King Street had the biggest and most expensive sale: a 269-lot gathering on April 29 that netted £1.78m. It also recorded the highest selling rates, although at 68 per cent by volume and 81 by value, they were not quite as strong as for the works of art offering two days earlier.

Right: among the highlights of the three-day on-the-premises house sale conducted by Woolley & Wallis at Ashley Manor, near Stockbridge, Hampshire from May 18-20 was this 11 1/2in (29cm) high bronze cast of a winsome puppy by Dame Elizabeth Frink (1930-1993).

FRANCE'S national auction watchdog, the Conseil des Ventes, has banned the firm Rey & Associés from all auction activity, for repeatedly staging sales without adequate insurance cover.

THE meteoric growth in demand for the rarer Beswick farm animals in good condition saw more money change hands for a 20th century Beswick Belted Galloway Bull than for an 18th century Whieldon bull and calf, at Brightwells' (15% buyer's premium) 524-lot April 28 specialist ceramic outing.

AT Gorringes’ (15% buyer's premium) April 27-29 sale, specialist Aaron Dean was satisfied with the reaction to some 200 lots of silver but, with the market for routine tea services and so on remaining fairly moribund, it is the smaller collectables which catch the eye.

FINANCIAL information giants Bloomberg are to start providing an art market index on their 180,000 global terminals. Stockbrokers, traders, fund managers and investors from across the world will be able to access the Gabrius Art Market Indices in an attempt to provide a new information benchmark for the sector and to make the tools for analysing the art market more widely available to the financial sector.

Right: this fine Nantgarw porcelain plate, once thought to be painted by Thomas Baxter and traditionally known as the ‘Three Graces’, was part of a collection of porcelain offered by Worcestershire auctioneers Philip Serrell on May 20.

POLICE investigating a series of gate thefts that have occurred in North Wales believe that they were stolen in order to sell as antiques.

THE way a Maltese connection can lift the price of any item, from watercolours of Valletta to old oak chests, was in evidence at the April 30 sale held at Strides (15% buyer’s premium) of Chichester when this wall clock, right, was offered.

LAST week’s High Court judgement on the dispute over the gilded urns sold by Christie’s to Taylor Lynne Thomson should not prompt any dramatic changes to traditional cataloguing practice.

ANOTHER piece of wine-related silver was among the better sellers at Olivers (10% buyer's premium) April 1 sale in the form of an Edwardian monteith.

SOME 100 lots of silver and plate at Amersham Auction Rooms' (15% buyer's premium) April 1 400-lot sale largely bore out the current perception of the market that wine-related items will sell in an otherwise moribund market.

APPEAL Court judges have lifted the punishment given to a London dealer convicted of handling £1.5m worth of stolen silver after hearing how he had committed the crimes in order to pay for his wife’s cancer treatment.