Art and antiques news from 2007

After a year-long fund-raising effort, The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has just secured the future of its most impressive Chelsea porcelain exhibit.

Only five Mayfair dealers will participate in this year’s London Sculpture Week (June 14-22), the smallest number since the initiative was launched in 2004.

The London Assay Office is hosting two seminars on detecting fakes and forgeries in antique silver on Friday, June 15 at Goldsmiths’ Hall, London and Friday, June 22 at Goldsmiths’ Hall, Edinburgh.

THE 14th century Penshurst Place with its walled garden is the ancestral home of the Sidney family and is still in the family’s ownership.

Founding partner Rémy Le Fur has left ArtCurial, where he was in charge of sales of furniture and objets d’art, and notably secured the prestigious Rossignol Collection, the most important furniture sale in Paris during the 2005-06 season.

The Birmingham industrialist and designer Matthew Boulton was the toast of the Paris salerooms last week when this impressive ormolu-mounted fluorspar vase was sold at Drouot Richelieu for €170,000 (£121,430) plus premium.

High Court turns down Iran’s bid to enforce its own penal law in UK in attempt to claim artefacts

Dreweatt Neate Neales in Nottingham will hold the first of a series of sales for Oxfam on April 19. Recent visitors to the charity’s website or one of its network of 750 high street shops may have noticed the launch of ‘Valued at Oxfam’.

KENT dealer and BADA member Lennox Cato has bought the premises next to his Edenbridge shop and this week reopens them as The Edenbridge Galleries, a centre exclusively for BADA members.

FLORIDA-based art world entrepreneur David Lester has put back the launch of SeaFair, his fine art yacht, from June to September.

NEXT year the British Antique Dealers Association celebrate the 90th anniversary of their foundation with a series of countrywide exhibitions in members’ shops and galleries.

Sotheby’s – who were outsold by Christie’s in Paris last year three to one – have announced a series of moves designed to reposition their Paris branch as “one of the pillars of the group’s global strategy”.

Southwark Council have confirmed to ATG that the building works in Bermondsey Square are on schedule for completion by Spring 2008.

THE Buxton Antiques Fair has been running for 43 years, which must make it one of the UK’s longest established dateline fairs.

Scandinavian auction house Bukowskis have a new owner.

THE leading dealer associations have drawn up guidelines to clarify the position on how the artists’ resale levy applies to sales of prints.

Cambridge auctioneers Cheffins are to offer a recently rediscovered archive of slides that depict the daredevil Malcolm Campbell in his pomp.

The highlight of the English and Continental furniture and objects sale conducted Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh on March 21 was this walnut, rosewood veneered, satinwood crossbanded and parcel gilt side table c.1805.

Halls auctioneer Jeremy Lamond expected the relaunch of his Shrewsbury saleroom to be the biggest challenge of the month. But a small box of antiques consigned for sale soon changed that.

“WE’VE got 1700 exhibitors at our March fair at the East of England Showground and we’ve been fully booked for six weeks now, with 1100 stallholders inside three large halls – including the Cambridge Suite with fine quality pieces – and marquees, and 600 dealers outside,” said Chris Hart of Bob Evans Fairs , the organiser of the twice-yearly Peterborough Festival of Antiques.