Art and antiques news from 2004

18TH century French books and bindings from the Bibliotheca Wittockiana are to be sold in Paris in October but some volumes of particular importance were included in the London sale and two are illustrated right.

UNDER the name Art Nouveau Originals, specialist dealer Cathy Turner is a very well-known figure on the fairs circuit, but she will now be even better known since she has just purchased The Bindery Gallery at 69 High Street, Broadway, Worcestershire (Tel: 01386 854645).

THE owners of Chicago’s Navy Pier have contracted Pfingsten Publishing to produce a new annual art and antiques event replacing two major fairs at the Windy City’s top venue.

DESPITE having success in his day, it seems a major oversight that marine artist Neville Sotheby Pitcher (1889-1959) does not make it into the specialist reference books such as E.H.H. Archibald’s The Dictionary of Sea Painters.

THE Fergusson show at Alexander Meddowes, coincides with Edinburgh’s exhilarating annual Festival, which brings with it not only hundreds of incredibly diverse theatrical shows but a good sprinkling of art exhibitions too.

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

HIGH-profile dealers Reindeer Antiques, who have a shop in Kensington Church Street, London W8 and a large complex in Northamptonshire, are to convert part of the latter into the Reindeer Antiques Centre.

SHAME on veteran organiser Cindy Mainwaring for mentioning the ‘C’ word when the summer is barely out.

ONE of the pioneers of the vogue for Japanese and Chinese design in the 1870s, Joseph Theodore Deck was also one of the first 19th century potters to explore Isnik floral designs and colour schemes. It was during his efforts to replicate the Turkish palette that he perfected the turquoise glaze that came to be known as bleu de Deck, or Deck blue.

A LOCAL estate provided the Thames Valley firm Bourne End Auction Rooms (12% buyer’s premium) with some fine lots for sale on August 4.

“NICE house, shame about the pictures,” must have been many people’s sentiment when they opened the catalogue of the July 21 sale at Bonhams Knightsbridge (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) of the contents of Marwell House, Hampshire. This fine, if rather rambling, red-brick Georgian house had, for many years, been the home of Dorothea, Viscountess Kelburn, the daughter of Sir Archibald Lyle, whose family made a fortune out of shipping and sugar refining.

CORNISH Ware fakes are becoming more sophisticated.

THE big natural history sale held by Bonhams on July 15 included a number of items that were in very handsome bindings indeed, but there was, too, a miscellaneous group of lots that included the fine example of the scarce and important neoclassical red morocco gilt bindings designed by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart for presentation copies of Stuart & Revett’s Antiquities of Athens, top right.

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.

SHAME on veteran organiser Cindy Mainwaring for mentioning the ‘C’ word when the summer is barely out.

AFTER four years of organising fairs at the Bournemouth Pavilion, the Hampshire-based organisers Valerie and Ken Sleeney, believe the wealthy town and hinterland has more to offer.

AUCTIONEERS and dealers in the south east are being warned by police to be alert to a man who has bounced cheques in a succession of salerooms in East Anglia.

THE three-session, 630-lot jewellery section of Tajan's (20.33% buyer's premium) August 3-4 sale, with a chirpy attendance of 80-100 throughout, met a more convincing response than the Modern art, bringing €2.7m (£1.8m) hammer, including an aftersale €145,000 (£96,670) for a grey-gold ring with a fancy yellow, rectangular 29.57-carat diamond (estimate €200,000-250,000).

CONGRATULATIONS to Middlesex-based organiser Sue Cruttenden who this month celebrates 25 years of her fortnightly Sunbury Antiques Market at Kempton Park Race Course, Sunbury-on-Thames.

LAPADA have abandoned Claridge’s as the venue for their London fair but plans for the launch of their LAPADA Autumn Antiques & Fine Art Fair are well advanced and well received by members of our largest trade association.