Art and antiques news from 2009

HUDDERSFIELD Town may not feature on Sky Sports as much as Manchester United nowadays, but back in the mid-1920s it was the Terriers rather than the Red Devils who were the team to watch.

THE English Ceramic Circle’s annual loan exhibition marks the launch of a major research project to record dated and documentary English pottery and porcelain on their website.

CLIVE Stewart-Lockhart of Dreweatts handed over the chairmanship of the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers to Paul Viney of Woolley & Wallis at the Society’s biennial dinner at the Royal Thames Yacht Club in London last week.

THE important 17th century ivory barometer stolen from the Fairfax House Museum in York has been recovered and is back on display in the museum.

JUST when you thought it was safe to go back into the softening Martinware market, along comes a £26,000 spoon-warmer.

THE campaign to persuade the government to extend business support to the antiques industry has set out in detail exactly what it wants to achieve.

LAPADA’s year-long search for their object of the year ended at Olympia on June 9 when the prize was awarded to Mayfair dealer Adrian Alan, who submitted this magnificent Grand Bureau by François Linke.

THIS mysterious liveried Austin A40 Dinky van made for the Spanish company Omnisport sold for £6400 on the phone to a British collector at Wallis & Wallis in Lewes, East Sussex on June 8.

SOTHEBY’S New York hold the W. Graham Arader sale on June 19, offering 204 lots from the well-known American prints and maps specialist.

ALTHOUGH this summer’s Russian art auctions in London failed to bring the gold rush of previous years, there was some relief in the salerooms that demand did not sink even further.

Toovey’s have announced an increase in their buyer’s premium to 22.5% plus VAT. They cite rising running costs as the chief cause for the increase, which comes into effect on June 16-19.

WHEN John Harrison set about solving the problem of how to measure longitude, the name Association would have held a special resonance for him.

STAFFORDSHIRE auctioneers Richard Winterton are to move all their operations to the purpose-built Lichfield Auction Centre at Fradley.

WHEN a market softens, it is often best to return to first principles – the core values of condition, market freshness and pricing that can be overlooked when an area of collecting really ‘takes off’.

A DISPUTE between Lord Lloyd Webber and the HM Revenue and Customs over the purchase, with the aid of taxpayers' money, of J.W. Waterhouse's St Cecilia by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation, has been settled out of court.

THERE were notable sales in the first hour of the two fairs which opened at Olympia in West London last Thursday.

CHRISTIE’S have launched legal action against US Internet entrepreneur Halsey Minor. Minor took Christie’s to court last December, accusing the auction house of fraud and a number of other torts after pictures he consigned to Christie’s dealership Haunch of Venison in May 2008 were not returned “in a timely fashion” when they failed to sell.

In terms of the bottom line, Christie’s latest Hong Kong HK$1.07bn (£83.5m) premium-inclusive Asian series was a far cry from the firm’s record-breaking HK$2.4bn (then £162.2m) extravaganza last year.

BRITISH Art Market Federation chairman Anthony Browne is fighting a rearguard action against the unexpected news that the Export Licensing Unit is to move to Birmingham.

“Our product is sustainable, re-usable and re-saleable. We must all work to make people aware that antiques are green.” So says Beaconsfield dealer Nigel Worboys, who this week launches a campaign to change the public perception. Click Here to register your vote on the Antiques are Green logo.