Art and antiques news from 2004

CONDITION is nine-tenths of the law in toy collecting and that explains the remarkable level of interest in this No.2 Special Pullman train set, pictured right, which turned up at Bonhams Edinburgh (17.5% buyer premium) on March 25.

ALTHOUGH many of the items on offer by the nine dealers taking part in London Sculpture Week (June 10-18) are antique, with some dating back more than 5000 years, there will be a few contemporary pieces.

AN April 29 sale held by Bloomsbury Auctions presented an enormous selection of children’s, illustrated and private press books that ran to nearly 900 lots. While there was much to admire in the other sections of the sale, I shall concentrate on the children’s books for this report. A great many of the lots came from one fine collection in which many of the books contained a bookplate designed by Pauline Baynes.

INCREASINGLY, London is showing its teeth as one of the world’s nuclei for international Contemporary art. And, with last week’s opening of two substantial commercial art galleries, its status is going only one way – upwards.

WITH London’s Master Drawings week looming in July, specialist dealers were predictably out in force to contest this long-lost François Boucher (1703-1770) drawing which re-emerged at the Oxford rooms of Mallams (15% buyer’s premium) on May 7.

POLICE have arrested a woman wanted for questioning in connection with a series of thefts from London antiques shops earlier this year.

INSURERS Axa Art have promised to settle claims linked to art lost in last week’s fire at Momart’s London warehouse as soon as possible.

THE organisers of the Newark International Antiques and Collectors’ Fair say more than 100 dealers have taken them up on an offer of a 50 per cent price break for those who do not currently stand at the giant fair.

“The best example I have seen in the last ten years,” said Woolley and Wallis’ decorative arts specialist Michael Jeffery, of this Martinware bird, which was consigned to the auctioneers’ May 26 sale from a vendor in the New Forest.

AN Antiques Trade Gazette investigation has raised serious questions over how eBay police their site, questions that remain unanswered after weeks, despite eBay being given ample opportunity to address these concerns.

WILD beasts, and tigers in particular, loomed large in the late Georgian imagination. They appear in a range of guises, from the fearful symmetry of William Blake’s Tyger to the almost cuddly features of the big cats modelled by Staffordshire potters for popular consumption.

The ABA’s annual Antiquarian Book Fair, which this year will be opened by the writer Frederick Forsyth, will run from June 3-6 at Olympia. Illustrated and/or very briefly described here are half a dozen items promised by dealers from Britain and the USA.

WHILE hundreds of dealers will be heading to London in June, this weekend, from May 29 to 31, others are heading out of town to the Langley Park Spring Antiques Fair, organised at Langley Park School, Loddon, by Norfolk based Liz Allport-Lomax of Lomax Antiques Fairs.

JUNE in London means the big fairs, an increasing number of dealers’ selling shows and, this year, such trade initiatives as Art Fortnight and London Sculpture Week. It is the month when all eyes are turned on the capital’s art and antiques trade and dealers, collectors and museum curators fly in from all over the world.

RUNNING until next Monday May 31 is the first Art Deco Fair to be held by Woburn Abbey Antiques Centre at Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire.

INEVITABLY fairs dominate June in London but there is also much activity in the galleries and showrooms with dealers taking advantage of the influx of serious collectors and trade into the capital.

SPECIALISING in what the name implies, British Import Antiques, who deal out of a wooden Belle Epoque pavilion at 23, Boulevard du Parc on Ile de Jatte in Neuilly, just west of Paris, are holding two open-door weekends on June 4 to 6 and June 11-13 when they hope to dispose of more than 1000 items of stock.

AS if there are not enough fairs in June in London, busy Sussex organiser Caroline Penman has decided to launch another, but at least this is far from the centre of town and does not tread on the toes of any of the established events.

NOW in its sixth year artLONDON has proved a popular and worthy addition to the roster of June fairs. Indeed, in this relatively short time it has become as much a part of the London summer scene as its much more venerable and mainstream stablemates, such as Grosvenor House and Olympia.

ALTHOUGH April saw no headline auctions in Belgian salerooms, several firms in both Brussels and Antwerp were in action and achieved some significant prices.