Art and antiques news from 2006

SEAFAIR, the ambitious project of a floating antiques selling exhibition along the Eastern seaboard of the United States, has delayed its launch from late this year to next June.

Before The Great War the Lincoln engineering company, William Foster and Co, was synonymous with the very best threshing machines. By 1918, managing director Sir William Tritton, together with Major W.G. Wilson, had been credited by the Royal Commission as the inventor of an armoured fighting vehicle forever known as the tank.

Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton was one of the most notorious British commanders of the American Revolution. After leading a series of successful operations in both the north and south, he returned home after the war as one of the most famous men in England, sat for a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds and began a long-term affair with actress and royal consort Mary Robinson.

Italy has witnessed a sudden, perhaps unexpected, surge in its auction scene with a series of record-breaking sales at Sotheby’s, the most remarkable of which has been the Milan sale of a cycle of Tiepolo canvases on May 30.

THE British Antique Dealers’ Association have called off plans for their much-debated January fair in New York.

This very fine early Regency period drum table c.1805 in a faded honey-coloured rosewood prompted an extraordinary bidding battle at Clevedon Salerooms near Bristol on June 1. Estimated at £4000-6000, it sold at a house record £200,000 (plus 15% buyer’s premium) to a member of the London trade. The underbidder was also a London dealer.

As if they will need it, some of the lots included in Christie’s June 13-14 sale of items from the collection of HRH The Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1930-2002) have received a little posthumous pepping up.

Cadogan Tate Fine Art have launched a new weekly transport service from London and Paris to Switzerland to meet the growing demand for discreet fine art transport.

Southampton Solent University will officially launch their new Art, Design and Society Scheme on Friday June 23.

Rare and significant works of art from the Old World will just occasionally surface, unrecorded, in the New.

JUST weeks after Clarion abandoned plans for reviving a Glasgow fair a group of Scottish dealers have announced a new Scottish event, The Merchants’ Hall Fine Art & Antiques Fair to be held in Edinburgh from September 22-24.

Auction house acquire leading Old Master dealer with debts of $26m

A NEW record for Ming porcelain set by a king of Las Vegas provided the headline, but the real story of Christie’s anniversary series in Hong Kong was the rise and rise of Modern and Contemporary Asian art. This relatively new visitor to the global auction market has now eclipsed more traditional collecting disciplines as Christie’s biggest earner in Hong Kong.

This is the month the trade in London really goes into overdrive, starting this week with the opening of The Summer Fair, Olympia on Thursday (June 8). Olympia is just one of four major London June fairs and these are complemented by an increasing number of dealer exhibitions around the capital.

Call for dealers to sign up as specials

AN unseen and apparently unique collection of photographs, letters and maps that illuminates the campaigns of Field Marshall Montgomery in the Second World War has emerged at Kent auctioneers Watermans.

Giving Scotland’s once-neglected art glass further standing in the saleroom, a good range of Monart and Ysasrt glass emerged at auction recently North of the Boarder.

Over 500 clients participated in Christie’s inaugural sale in Dubai last month at the Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel.

The vendor of this handsome Chinese brush pot or bidong did not hold it in high regard. An heirloom from a grandfather who had spent some time in the Far East, the 6in (15.5cm) vessel had been relegated to the potting shed as a useful receptacle for garden tools and potting compost.

CLARION Scotland have cancelled the Fine Art and Antiques Show Scotland scheduled for the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, Glasgow from August 17 to 20. The new fair was essentially a relaunch of Fran Foster’s Antiques For Everyone Glasgow, which ran at the SECC for six years until its final staging in May 2005.