Art and antiques news from 2005

THE appearance of a significant Lenkiewicz forgery on the market has prompted the foundation dedicated to the artist to set up an authentication service.

Charterhouse, Sherborne, December 10, Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent TWO fine timepieces led this Dorset sale. Top price by a long way was the £21,000 bid for an unusual brass skeleton clock designed for a Victorian railway industrialist.

Christie's King Street, 20 January, Buyer's Premium: 20/12%.The most expensive piece from the 26 lots offered from Endsleigh, the Devon cottage designed for the 6th Duke of Bedford was this 6ft (1.8m) wide carved oak side table designed c.1801-14 by Jeffry Wyatt, the architect responsible for the main decorative scheme at Endsleigh, and made by local cabinetmaker John Williams of Exeter.

ELR, Sheffield, December 10, Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent Changing fashion was the talking point at ELR’s recent quarterly antiques sale. While the market for traditional furniture remains difficult, collectable names from the 20th century were in high demand.

Back in the late 1920s, during the height of the so-called Etching Boom, prints by Scottish contemporary artists such as Muirhead Bone, David Young Cameron and James McBey were the subject of the sort of feverish speculation which now characterises the market for cutting-edge names like Damien Hirst, Richard Prince and Maurizio Cattelan.

AFTER more than 41 years, veteran silver dealers Hymie and Shirley Dinerstein have left West London’s Portobello Road.

FOR its seventh London staging, The Watercolours and Drawings Fair leaves its long-time home at the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly, and moves deeper into Mayfair to The Royal Academy, 6 Burlington Gardens, W1 where it will run from February 3 to 6 with a charity preview on the evening of February 2.

SOME weeks ago, I wrote about the immense variety in the quality of stock and presentation to be found in antique centres up and down the country.

UK Trade & Investment, the export directorate of the Department of Trade, has offered, through the British Art Market Federation, a grant of £25,000 to be shared among 19 UK dealers showing at the eighth annual Chicago Antiques Fair from April 29 to May 2.

ANTO CARTE (1886-1954) has emerged as the darling of the Belgian auction scene in recent years, and was again responsible for the country’s top saleroom price in December.

It would be amiss not to record the fortunes of the rare George II provincial silver tea kettle that, as reported in ATG no.1663, dated November 6 had been consigned for sale at Toronto fine art auctioneers Waddingtons (15% buyer’s premium) on December 6.

Two of the strongest performances in the December ceramics sales came from the glass sections offered at Bonhams Bond Street on December 8 and at Sotheby’s Olympia two weeks later.

After five years of hosting the British Antiques & Collectables Awards, the chairman and board of BACA have cancelled the event for 2005. Issues of funding have led to the decision.

Damien Hirst’s tiger shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde, once the centrepiece of the Charles Saatchi collection and arguably the best-known work by a late 20th century British artist, has been sold to an American collector for a price close to £7m.

Morphets, Harrogate, November 25 Buyer’s premium: 15/10 per centTWO different female figures stole the limelight at Harrogate; a rather racy bronze and alabaster, semi-nude who graced the catalogue front cover, and a much smaller, more demure, bronze bust of a young girl.

As was reported a couple of weeks ago, regional schools of American painting from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are one of the strongest sectors on the art market on other side of the Atlantic at the moment.

BOOKS, playbills and pictures from a collection formed by the late Gerald Tyler, an amateur actor and producer with the Leeds and Bradford Civic Theatres, founding chairman of the British Children’s Theatre Association and a man who was active in drama education, formed part of a January 8 sale held by Rowley Fine Art of Ely.

THE new year for Bloomsbury Auctions kicked off on January 14 with a general sale and opened with a selection of books on heraldry and genealogy from the estate of the late Michael Maclagan. Richmond Herald.

The Talbot Walk Antique Centre in Ripley and Wellers Auctioneers in Chertsey are holding a special auction in aid of the Tsunami appeal at Ripley Village Hall, Surrey this Sunday, January 30, at 5pm.

Lawrences, Bletchingley Buyer’s premium: 12.5 per centTHE unceasing campaign among provincial auctioneers to bring the right material to the rostrum is, perhaps, tougher the nearer one is to London. However, salerooms outside the capital can compete both on vendors’ charges and by accepting pieces turned down by the metropolitan’s top three.