Art and antiques news from 2004

ONE of London’s most treasured small museums faces a funding crisis after a rent rise and the rejection of its grant application by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

RIGHT: although an undeniably rare beast, the super-cute sleeping Wemyss piglet, just 6 1/2in (16.5cm) long, has made a number of appearances at Sotheby's Gleneagles over the years.

Pot-Lids and other Coloured Printed Staffordshire Wares: Reference and Price Guide by KV Mortimer, published by the Antique Collectors’ Club, ISBN 1851494383, £35hb. ALL the literature on pot lids is now well over 20 years old – the ACC’s last book on the subject, The Price Guide to Pot-Lids and other Under-Glazes, was published in 1970 and again in 1980.

THE Lambert Collection of British art pottery and furniture comes under the hammer at Bonhams Bond Street (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) on September 22.

FRAUDSTERS are targeting internet bidders once more with the ‘stolen picture’ and ‘stolen identity’ scams on eBay.

THE owners of a mid-18th century cello by Tomasso and Lorenzo Carcassi of Florence have appealed for its safe return following a theft in North Finchley.

THE most topical entry in Clevedon Salerooms (15% buyer's premium) large 1200-lot outing on June 17-18 was a collection of Olympics memorabilia. Entered by descendants of the 1908 gold medal winning water polo player Thomas H. Thould, the group fetched £3300.

Badges by Philip Atwood, published by the British Museum Press. ISBN 0714150142 £7.99sb AMONG the British Museum’s priceless antiquities is the museum’s collection of some 12,000 badges. A small, hard-to-find exhibition, showing at the museum until January 16, presents just a tiny fraction of this archive.

TRADITIONAL favourite in the form of a mantel clock led Stride & Son's (15% buyer's premium) 1000-lot July 30 sale but probably more eye-catching were the collectors’ items. The clock, a 19th century mahogany example in a Georgian-style balloon case by London makers Camerer Cuss, went to a Kent buyer at £2300.

THE lengthy compensation payment process in the Sotheby’s-Christie’s price-fixing case looks set to drag on as the validity of every claim is determined.

NICK Bonham has quit the board of Bonhams after working for the firm for 38 years.

EARLIER this year Bloomsbury Book Auctions moved to Mayfair’s Maddox Street and changed their name to the all-embracing Bloomsbury Auctions (17.5/10% buyer’s premium).

INTEREST from UK furniture dealers in these Channel Islands sales may have waned of late, but Martel Maides (15% buyer's premium) reckon they are benefiting from Jersey’s lack of a permanent fine art saleroom (although the annual Bonhams sale at St Helier comes round this month).

GOOD standard furniture sold well enough at Mitchell's (15% buyer's premium) July 15-16 sale and included a locally made Jacobean piece.

COLLECTING fashions come and go, but the redoubtable Marcel Dyf (1899-1995) never seems to be short of admirers. This signed 23 1/4in x 2ft 4in (59 x 71cm) canvas, right, La Courbe de la Rivière, was the lone picture highlight of Dreweatt Neate’s (15% buyer’s premium) August 24 sale in Bristol when it sold to the London trade at £7600 against an estimate of £4000-6000.

OUR hugely busy lives are made more bearable by labour-saving inventions. For every one that made it from drawing board to retailer there were hundreds more that didn’t catch on. With a subtitle of “and amazing gadgets, gizmos and thingamabobs”, this is a pictorial illustration of some 100 extremely wacky and ingenious inventions which Maurice Collins has built up over 30 years, alongside his collection of posters and printed ephemera.

When John Norie (d.2003) began his collection back in the 1950s, caddy spoons were not every collector’s cup of tea.

TIMES may be tough at fairs, but that does not stop organisers launching new ones, nor dealers giving them a go.

CORNISH Ware fakes are becoming more sophisticated.

GIVEN Hitler’s order to execute any commando captured during WWII, it was unusual for British special forces to wear much in the way of identification. That goes some way to explaining the rarity of this cloth badge (or formation sign) seen at a postal auction conducted by Bosley’s (15% buyer’s premium) on July 21.