Art and antiques news from 2004

RIGHT: despite the occasionally negative press the antiques trade has received in recent weeks a media circus arrived at Sotheby’s on July 7 to watch the Bond Street auctioneers sell Young Woman Seated at the Virginals, a newly-acknowledged picture by Johannes Vermeer (1632-75).

IN the eyes of many of today’s collectors, it is the realist interiors, which range from old farm buildings to grand rooms, and the figure subjects of William Henry Hunt (1790-1864), which are most desirable, a fact highlighted by the artist’s sale results.

THE highlight of a 15-piece collection of Wedgwood ceramics offered for sale by Kidson-Trigg (15% buyer’s premium) of Highworth on May 26-27 was a pair of Wedgwood & Bentley black basalt oil lamps (one shown top right) that would have represented the height of fashion c.1775.

DUNCAN Chilcott, until recently South West regional director and senior valuer at Bonhams, is setting up an auction business in Tiverton.

CHRISTIE'S have strengthened their photography and 20th century design team by appointing Joshua Holdeman, formerly international director of photographs at Phillips, de Pury & Co.

THIS 18th century embroidered and appliqué yellow felt horse blanket, right, emblazoned with the arms of the Tighe family and their motto Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optem (Let me neither fear nor wish for the last day), was an evocative reminder of 18th century Dublin pageantry.

THE problem with over-ambitious estimates does not just apply to the sort of significant paintings which consignors may be led to believe are worth sums in the £100,000-£1m range.

IN the eyes of many of today’s collectors, it is the realist interiors, which range from old farm buildings to grand rooms, and the figure subjects of William Henry Hunt (1790-1864), which are most desirable, a fact highlighted by the artist’s sale results.

WHAT do the Society of Women Artists (SWA), founded in 1855, and Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers (RMS), founded in 1896, have in common?

BUSY Florida-based organisers Bob Smith and Dolphin Promotions hold one of the Midwest’s top antiques events from August 27 to 29 when the 29th annual Chicago O’Hare Summer Antique Show & Sale returns to the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois.

STAYING with idyllic summer settings, next month Sussex organiser Ron Beech hosts his one fair of the year, the annual Lindfield Antiques Fair, which has been running at the King Edward Hall in the West Sussex village near Haywards Heath for 37 years.

WITH selling rates that rarely dip below 80 per cent and steadily increasing totals that are the envy of more traditional departments, auctions of Contemporary art continue to go from strength to strength.

BUSY Florida-based organisers Bob Smith and Dolphin Promotions hold one of the Midwest’s top antiques events from August 27 to 29 when the 29th annual Chicago O’Hare Summer Antique Show & Sale returns to the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois.

BERKSHIRE-based Dinah Ives, who operates as Magna Carta Country Fayres, has a new venue from Sunday October 10 – St. Leonard’s Mansion at Legoland, near Windsor.

SARAH Harvey, chief executive of LAPADA, has given her backing to the concept of a marketing campaign in support of the whole antiques industry.

THOMAS Rowlandson’s (1756-1827) watercolour Place des Victoires, Paris (estimated £60,000-80,000) failed to find a buyer when offered at Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) on July 1.

ON June 4, as part of the Fortunoff library, Bloomsbury Auctions sold a 1936 first of John Maynard Keynes’ enormously infleunetial General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money for £1700 (Bauman).

IN its latest published results, Partridge have recorded a significant fall in both turnover and profits citing again the very difficult trading conditions.

FOR 71 of his 84 years Harry Davis (1885-1969) worked as a decorator at the Royal Worcester factory, ultimately rising to the post of foreman painter. He painted a wide variety of subjects, but is best known for his sheep-decorated landscapes, all produced in the first quarter of the 20th century.

THE most desirable of the varied wares produced by the small ceramics factory established by Vilmos Zsolnay (1828-1900) in the southwest Hungarian town of Pecs are those created after the 1890s. It was then that Zsolnay – having encountered the glazes of Clement Massier in Paris – perfected his Eosine glaze and employed his principle designer Tade Sikorski to model forms sympathetic to the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil movements.