Art and antiques news from 2005

Pot Lids and Stevengraphs were two areas of the market put to the test last month.

A group of 19th century sepia drawings, depicting Aborigines in Queensland, came up for auction at Brightwells (15% buyer’s premium) sale of paintings and prints on January 26 in Leominster, Herefordshire.

The annual Paris Salon du Dessin will showcase 30 of the world’s premier drawings specialists at the Palais de la Bourse in Paris from March 16-21.

Responding to requests from auctioneers and site users, the pop-up images on antiquestradegazette.com are now bigger.

François Tajan, chairman and principal auctioneer of Tajan SA, France’s leading auction firm for many years, is quitting the company and will leave at the end of April.

No great improvement in trading conditions was reported by the majority of dealers who completed the most recent BADA survey.

DEALERS who have been waiting in vain for a sustained up-turn in business are being urged to register for the fourth Art of Dealing conference on May 16.

CHRISTIE’S have launched their appeal against the High Court judgment in the Houghton urns case.

IN February 1885, a 21ft long illuminated manuscript dating back to the 1320s was exhibited to the Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries in London.It was described as “a very curious Genealogical Roll of the Kings of England” whose “chief point of interest is the artistic excellence of the figures”.

VISCOUNT Linley has joined Christie’s as a non-executive director.

THE Andrew McIntosh Patrick Collection of metalwork by Christopher Dresser – to be sold by Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull in April – is on view at The Fleming Collection, 13 Berkeley Street, London W1 on Thursday, March 10 (not March 7 as previously advertised).

Christie’s are launching new large-format magazine style catalogues to accompany the periodic house furnishing sales that they hold in their London and New York rooms.

MARCH in the small and ancient Dutch city of Maastricht is not just the hub of the international art world for the duration of the world’s top fair, TEFAF Maastricht. It has an impact which reverberates throughout the whole year and is a commercial event unparalleled in its quality and expertise.

Police have issued this CCTV image of a man wanted for questioning in connection with a theft at a Greenwich antiques shop.

Two pictures by Henry Redmore (1820-1887) helped Scarborough auctioneers David Duggleby (12.5% buyer’s premium) to a record sale back on November 29 by selling for a combined £27,600.

Back in the 1920s the Great Western Railway was amongst the pioneers of marketing. It produced a large array of promotional items, among which were the well-known series of wooden jigsaw puzzles made by the Chad Valley toy company, and sold on the railway’s bookstalls. Nearly 40 different puzzles were made.

Normally the phrase ‘museum quality’ implies pieces so rarified that you only occasionally meet them in the normal course of antique hunting.

A GROUND-BREAKING study into the likely effects of a new levy on art shows it could seriously damage the UK market and cost jobs.

Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (1844-1934), born in upstate New York to abolitionist Quaker farmers, was a man of many talents. Over his long lifetime he was a banker, shopkeeper, inventor and painter -– he even penned an opera. However, he is best known to generations of bar-going Americans for his paintings of dogs playing poker.

THE currencies of the world will be traded at Maastricht, but no exchange is likely to match that seen on the stand of West Yorkshire porcelain specialist Valerie Clark at Robert Bailey’s Winter Fine Art and Antiques Fair in Harrogate over the weekend of February 4 to 6.