Art and antiques news from 2005

THE reputation established by Gardiner Houlgate over the last ten years for Clarice Cliff pottery has resulted in two specialist sales each year of around 200 lots.

Decorative Arts may be a volatile market but it follows a patternDECORATIVE ARTS by Anne Crane

London antique dealers Mallett’s of New Bond Street have been awarded €111,533 (£80,000) by the Irish High Court after suing an Irish dealer over a stolen bureau bookcase.

AFTER seven hours of lectures and debate, what were the major points to have come out of the Art of Dealing Conference? Several themes kept re-emerging. Here is a snapshot summary of some of them.

Sotheby’s sale of a sizeable slice of the contents Easton Neston, the English Baroque country house that has been home of the Fermor-Hesketh family since it was built in 1699, raised a premium-inclusive £8.7m last week when the auctioneers offered 1472 lots over two days in a marquee on the grounds from May 17-19.

François Pinault, the French business tycoon who owns Christie’s, has abandoned his plans to build a £100m museum near Paris to house his Contemporary art collection.

AT this year’s CINOA General Assembly, held in New York from May 12 to 14, delegates representing dealers associations from more than 20 countries discussed two political areas which they felt threatened the international art market.

François Tajan, who quit as chairman of Tajan SA, the firm founded by his father Jacques, at the end of March, has joined Paris rivals ArtCurial.

Art of Dealing suggests way ahead for the art and antiques industry, and how to pay for it

Andrew Hartley, Ilkley. Buyer’s premium: 10 per centSOME high individual prices but, for West Yorkshire auctioneers Andrew Hartley, an unusually high casualty rate of 29 per cent… “It was a very patchy market,” said Mr Hartley summing up what so many auctioneers are finding.

Classic English furniture continues to bring good prices at auction providing the quality is there – and this Regency sofa table, right, certainly filled that requirement when it was offered at the March 3 sale in Cornwall held by Bonhams Par (17.5% buyer’s premium).

THE scientific tests stacked up. The catalogue description was fair. The buyer got what she paid for. But somehow Christie’s still managed to lose the High Court action brought by special client Taylor Lynne Thomson.

Certainly the most eye-catching lot offered by Lincoln saleroom Thos. Mawer and Son (15% buyer’s premium) on April 23 was this carved bone or ivory model of a 1940s Raleigh Roadster bicycle.

New student admissions to the BA (Hons) Fine Arts Valuation degree course are being suspended for at least a year as the Southampton Institute conducts an extensive internal review of its Faculty of Media, Arts and Society.

Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull have secured one of Scotland’s key art collections for sale in January 2006.

Regular readers of ATG saleroom reports will be all too aware of the recent price explosion of Minton’s pâte sur pâte ceramics. This highly distinctive, almost cameo-like form of carved slip decoration was perfected by Louis-Marc Solon who had his own special iconography of nymphs and putti engaged in a bewildering array of quirky pursuits.

SOTHEBY’S auction and related revenues rose by more than 20 per cent, year on year, for the first quarter of 2005, coming in at $72.2m.

ARMS and armour sales, which themselves encompass a myriad special interests, are another area with their own micro-economy impervious to whatever wild winds are blowing in the wider market.

A NUMBER of niche sales in spring once again showed why they are a matter of some envy among other auctioneers whose offerings are far more vulnerable to contrary winds of fashion and the general economy.

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