Art and antiques news from 2005

If a silhouette was going to set a new auction record then this elaborately embellished, highly decorative and grandiose royal subject was surely a good candidate. When it sold for £9500 (plus 20 per cent premium) at Bonhams on February 22, it beat the auctioneers’ own previous auction high of £8000 set last year by a Torond conversation piece.

A POSSIBLE hike in import VAT linked to works of art sold in the UK is not the threat some fear, says British Art Market Federation chairman Anthony Browne.

Alex Neish is to donate a small collection of Judaica to a museum at the recently excavated and restored 12th century synagogue in Barcelona.

NEWS too, of confident moves in the fine art trade. After a career in the London art world spanning some 45 years, Martin Summers has, just after his 66th birthday, set up his own gallery and dealership, Martin Summers Fine Art Ltd, at 54 Glebe Place in Chelsea.

THE memory of a long-ago, short-lived trade agreement between England and France was rekindled by an extraordinary embroidered waistcoat that surfaced in the Deburaux & Associés sale in Paris on February 11, when it sold to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich for €5000 (£3470) plus 20.33% buyer’s premium.

FAMOUS West End department store Heal’s is the sponsor of the V&A’s major spring exhibition, International Arts and Crafts, which will be held at the museum in South Kensington from March 17 to 24.

A SURVEY has unveiled the hostility of antique dealers to the London Assembly’s bid to extend the congestion charge to Kensington and Chelsea.

THE future of the United States’ trade in Chinese works of art remains in limbo following a Washington committee hearing to debate a possible ban on imports.

INCLUDED in Potburys’ (12.5% buyer’s premium) sale in Sidmouth, Devon on February 8 and 9 was a 75-lot collection of pictures by the Orientalist painter Charles Robertson (1844-91) consigned from his granddaughter’s estate. They appear to have been the works that remained in the family after the artist’s Godalming studio was sold off following his death from a heart attack aged 47.

Brightwells, Leominster, January 12-13 Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent Illuminating this 900-lot Hereford-shire sale was the English brass candlestick featured on the front page of ATG No.1675, February 5, which was taken to £4600 in the confident belief it was a period 16th century example.

PRESENTER and interviewer Jeremy Paxman, pictured right, has agreed to be the patron of this year’s Antiquarian Book Fair, which will be held at Olympia in West London from June 9 to 12.

David Lay, Penzance. January 20 & 21. Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent THERE were rather fewer lots than usual at Cornwall but the 720 on offer were true to tradition; a high take up (around 90 per cent), plenty of two- and three-figure bids on collectables and ceramics, standard furniture creeping into four figures, and one lot taking off.

The market for Clarice Cliff may not be the spirited beast it was five or six years ago when Christie’s South Kensington’s specialist sales could routinely expect to boast 80-90 per cent selling rates by lot.

A WORK of art in itself, a piece of US history and redolent of the tragic past of the American Indian tribes in which so many collectors are now passionately interested. Could any artefact be more likely to guarantee a huge price than this Blackfoot war bonnet, right, dating from the early/mid 19th century but still in fine condition?

Publicity worked well in the Lyon & Turnbull sale for Golf in the Year 2000, or What are We Coming To..., a work of 1892 by J.A.C.K.

NOW in its 13th year, the BADA Antiques & Fine Art Fair has become not just an established but a highly regarded fixture on the British quality fairs scene.

THE engaging subject and large size of this 16 x 13in (41 x 33cm) Berlin-style porcelain plaque, right, helped it to the top slot at the January 18 sale held by Philip Laney (15% buyer’s premium) at the Malvern Auction Centre.

THE fortifying glass of fruit punch offered by the Wadebridge auctioneers Lambrays (15% buyer’s premium) to buyers before the start of their traditional Cornish New Year’s Eve sale may not have fuelled much interest in the mid- to low-range quality furniture – around two-thirds of which failed to sell – but it whetted one private buyer’s appetite for the large shaped stained glass window, right.

Valued at £1500-2000, a signed first issue of William Blacker’s The Art of Angling..., printed in 1842 in Edinburgh by Anderson & Bryce and containing 31 trout flies and a single salmon fly attached with decorative coloured paper seals (see illustration top right) but lacking the single plate, was bid to £22,000 (Head).

LAST week I reported how Kensington porcelain specialist Simon Spero was moving following the termination of his lease.