Art and antiques news from 2004

SOLD for £25,000 at Sotheby’s on June 25 was a group of letters, documents and sketches by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, or Il Guercino [the ‘Squinter’], his painter nephew, Benedetto Gennari and his patron Claudio Bertazzoli, that relate to the former’s altarpiece for Santa Maria della Pieta dei Teatini in Ferrara – The Purification of the Virgin.

FOUNDED in 1950, and still one of the capital’s most familiar antiques events, The Chelsea Antiques Fair has marked the beginning of the autumn anti-ques season for decades, as it will again when from September 17 to 26 it runs at its usual venue, Chelsea Old Town Hall in the King’s Road, London SW3.

HERTFORDSHIRE organiser Paul Bishop, who founded Oxbridge Fairs to mount specialist glass events, holds his fourth Cambridge Glass Fair at Chilford Hall Vineyard, Linton, Cambridgeshire this Sunday (September 12) and, with 100 tables, it is fully booked.

RIGHT: though I suspected a sub-text, this black letter broadside, printed “at London in the Olde Baily by Richard Lant for Thomas Porefut in Paules Churchyard at the sygne of Lucrese”, seems to offer a straightforward account (in a translation by Renolde Olyver) of a violent storm and consequent disasters that took place at Mechlin [Malines], near Antwerp, in August 1546.

CAPE Cod auctioneers Eldred’s of East Dennis had a busy August schedule and results from their series of Asian and Americana sales will appear in future US Selections, but seen here are two of the 970 lots found in an August 12-13 sale of Fine & Decorative Art.

HERTFORDSHIRE organiser Paul Bishop, who founded Oxbridge Fairs to mount specialist glass events, holds his fourth Cambridge Glass Fair at Chilford Hall Vineyard, Linton, Cambridgeshire this Sunday (September 12) and, with 100 tables, it is fully booked.

PLENTY of art and antiques on offer around the capital this month but the imaginative Mayfair tribal art specialists the Gordon Reece Gallery have come up with a different take on the decorative, with a selling exhibition they hold at 16 Clifford Street, London W1 until October 2.

INNOVATIVE Oxfordshire dealers The Country Seat may be best known as furniture specialists, but they are increasingly turning their focus towards 19th and 20th century design.

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.

DEVON, with its old wealth and influx of well-heeled retired couples, can provide a rich hinterland, but summer can still mean a bit of a scramble to find enough quality material to offer at Bearne’s (15/10% buyer's preimum) fine quarterly sales at Exeter.

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

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.

RIGHT: this suite of Victorian silver gentleman’s dressing table bottles is among 200 lots donated from Dorset homes that will be sold for charity at auction on September 18.

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

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.

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).

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.

Victorian China Fairings: The Collectors’ Guide by Derek H. Jordan, published by the Antique Collectors’ Club, ISBN 1851494464, £35hb. WITH a book dedication by the author to “all my non-collecting friends who I have bored silly over the years”, Derek Jordan has a massive private collection of these little Victorian/Edwardian china ornaments with their droll comments on life, buying his first three fairings at the Folkestone Antiques Fair.

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