Art and antiques news from 2005

WITH the emphasis this week on Europe, a reminder that life goes on elsewhere.

Figures of Victorian cricketers are, like all of the sporting groups, amongst the most desirable of the Staffordshire portrait groups.

Following the success of the discounted entry to the Newark fair, dmg Antiques Fairs will test a reduced entry price of £10 for trade day at the Ardingly fair on April 19.

Have van, will travel. Competition for market-fresh material is as strong in the northwest as anywhere in the country, so auctioneer Adrian Byrne was more than happy to entertain the prospect of travelling to the Orkney Islands in pursuit of a decent house clearance.

TAJAN (20.93% buyer’s premium) started the year with guns blazing on January 17 and a sale dominated by 19th century weaponry.

Bonhams are expanding their existing New York presence by taking gallery space at the Fuller Building, 595 Madison Ave. The new space will enable Bonhams to hold regular sales in New York beginning in the summer.

Carl Richard Lepsius led a well prepared Prussian expedition to Egypt in 1842-45 and as well as surveying the monuments, sent back some 15,000 antiquities to Berlin.

Two unfamiliar French artists, Gustave Cariot and André Marchand, figured strongly at Tajan’s Modern art sale on January 31.

FOR a century and a half, the family breweries which peppered Stroud, supplied the Cotswolds with a variety of ales.

THERE was an unprecedented attendance at the February Newark fair as buyers took advantage of a free ticket offer to experience the fair’s new three-day format.

WELSH organisers Amulet Fairs are at Deeside on Sunday February 27 and then, on March 6, at Llangollen. Remember to bring your euros.

BEST known for their period silver by the master English silversmiths, Mayfair dealers Marks Antiques are also making a name for themselves with Fabergé, and, on February 18 and 19, hold a selling Fabergé exhibition at Martyn Cook Antiques, Queen Street, Woollahra, Sydney.

Buoyed by rising stockmarkets and the continuing strength of the euro against the pound, European private collectors were buying in force at Sotheby’s and Christie’s February round of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art sales in London.

More Nelson fever to report. The exterior to this rounded rectangular George III silver vinaigrette by Birmingham smith Matthew Linwood is really very plain but open it up and it reveals a gilt hinged grille embossed with a ship portrait inscribed Victory and flanked by the word Trafalgar and the date Oct 21 1805.

WITH MacArthurmania gripping a nation already gearing itself up for the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar, this should, in theory, be an auspicious year for the UK marine pictures market.

Though blessed with means of communication beyond the comprehension of anyone of Nelson’s navy – superior by far to signal beacons, semaphore and speeding sloops and cutters – an unfortunate breakdown in these modern methods meant that the two Nelson items featured in last week’s reports were not joined by what proved to be the star turn in a Lyon & Turnbull sale of February 1.

A remarkable array of art and antiques seized by the High Court from an Austrian businessman convicted of fraud were sold by a small-scale Buckinghamshire auctioneer last week.

A New York jury has ruled in a legal case that has locked the horns of the two biggest names in real-time Internet bidding.

ANOTHER feature of this early winter New York season is the sales held by Baldwin’s Auctions, Dmitry Markov and Münzen und Medaillen (New York branch) (all 15% buyer’s premium).

Clarke Gammon Wellers, Guildford, December 14. Buyer’s premium: 15 per centTHE current demand for decorative furniture was underscored at this 710-lot Surrey auction by a pair of hybrid, George III, satinwood marquetry and parcel gilt side tables which stole the limelight.