Art and antiques news from 2009

THE annual survey from LAPADA, the UK’s largest art and antique dealer association, shows a largely stable market compared with the previous year, but with one or two significant changes.

AN outcry from interest groups has bought more time to save the Broadfield House Glass Museum at Stourbridge, which was earmarked for closure by Dudley council.

CHRISTIE’S year-end results for 2008 show that Europe, including the UK, is currently their premier global market in terms of sales, with a total of £1.24bn compared to £1.02bn in the United States.

Positive news from Dreweatts' clocks sale at Donnington Priory, Newbury on February 10 which posted a 92 per cent selling rate.

THE owners of Antiquarius have submitted their plans to the council to turn the West London antiques centre into American fashion chain store.

SOTHEBY'S have completed the purchase of their New York headquarters in a $370m deal.

BY 1780, John Trumbull (1756-1843), a budding young artist from Lebanon, Connecticut who had sketched the Revolutionary War, found himself in grave difficulty.

A FORMER president of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association has admitted stealing dozens of books from Sir Evelyn de Rothschild valued at a total of around £230,000.

BIRMINGHAM auction house Biddle & Webb are to open a Wolverhampton office later this month.

WHILE children celebrated as schools shut down across the country, the reaction of the art and antiques trade to the heavy snow that swept over Britain last week was largely less exuberant.

Melting bidders' hearts in a snow-covered Dorchester, this rare Doulton figure of a little girl cradling a doll proved the star attraction at Duke's sale on February 5-6.

IN Paris the auction year will start in the most spectacular manner with the Yves Saint Laurent/Bergé collection sale on February 23-24. But 2009 holds out promise for the French art market in other areas too.

Prisoner-of-war work is the name given to intricately crafted small objects created from carved bone or wood and straw marquetry by captured French prisoners languishing in the hulks and other jails during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

THE Inland Revenue are calling for more firms to use their new Business Payment Support Service after receiving more than 44,500 phone calls asking for help since it was launched in November.

THE flagship art sales in London saw a good take up last week after estimates were cut by as much as 40 per cent from their boom levels.

THE global credit crunch's latest victims are the Moscow World Fine Art Fair and the Salzburg World Fine Art Fair, which will not go ahead this year.

ATG Media have launched their bid to replace eBay as the primary provider of live online auctions. There have been several companies jockeying for position since the demise of eBay Live Auctions at the end of last year, but ATG Media, who also own Antiques Trade Gazette, argue that their new partnership scheme offers the best deal.

WOOLLEY and Wallis silver specialist Alex Butcher is well known for his expertise in the spoon world, but his most recent offering at the Salisbury saleroom took the specialisation a step further.

BOND Street dealership Mallett have replaced chief executive Lanto Synge in the wake of the company’s weakening performance and rising costs.

Remarkable for both their size and their original condition, this pair of Italian console tables c,1760 sold for £28,000 Semley Auctioneers of Shaftesbury in Dorset on January 24.