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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

WE’VE long had a thing about toast, that peculiarly British way of serving bread and a primary comfort food. Think Marmite soldiers dunked into soft-boiled eggs and wintry afternoons toasting bread over an open fire.

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.

A QUALITY furniture grouping and a small, but strong, Oriental section contributed to the upbeat performance of Halls (15% buyer's premium) 258-lot sale on July 14, the top lot of which, a £24,000 George III mahogany longcase, was illustrated on the front cover of Antiques Trade Gazette No. 1650 dated July 31 and August 7.

A RELATIVELY quiet day for S.J. Hales (15% buyer's premium) who specialise in English ceramics, but the August 4 sale still attracted plenty of Staffordshire specialists as usual.

EXCEPTIONAL golfing collectables can still command exceptional prices.

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

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.

CHANNELLING more routine furniture through their Bicester auctions, the Oxford base of Mallams (15% buyer's premium) has been able to focus on selling more unusual, decorative and commercial entries, much to auctioneer Ben Lloyd’s satisfaction.

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.

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.

THIS year’s RICS art and antiques conference promises three days of tours, talks and enjoyment in and around Leeds.

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

KNOWN for her stock of top-quality, early furniture with character, Lucy Johnson holds a special selling exhibition this weekend from September 3 to 5 at her showroom, a 17th century stone barn just outside Burford on the Cotswold Wildlife Park Estate, Oxfordshire.

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.

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.