Art and antiques news from 2009

A STOLEN chequebook has been used to purchase items from at least two antiques shops in Ludlow, Shropshire.

INTERNATIONAL Antiques and Collectors’ Fairs (IACF), the owners of the Newark showground fair, have announced controversial plans to revive the fair at RAF Swinderby just days after the site was vacated by Arthur Swallow Fairs in favour of the Lincoln Showground.

THIS portable regulator signed Thwaites and Reed, London sold for £16,500 (plus 19.5 per cent buyer's premium) at Lawrences of Crewkerne, Somerset on July 10.

The partnership between Toronto auctioneers Ritchies and Sotheby’s has been dissolved after payment deadlines were missed following a joint sale of Canadian art on May 25.

KENDAL Auction Rooms, who have operated in Cumbria since 1818, are to rebrand as Eighteen Eighteen Auctioneers.

FOR an item almost destined for a landfill site, this delapidated red leather chesterfield, found in the outhouse of a Northamptonshire rectory, wouldn’t be the first thing you would expect to generate international bidding.

MATTHEW Barton, who has over 20 years experience in the auction business, will hold his first sale under his own banner on November 25 in West Kensington.

THE former premises of Wolverhampton auctioneer Walker Barnett & Hill have reopened again under new management.

INFORMATION on some of the valuable pieces of Sèvres porcelain stolen from Lord Gage’s Sussex stately home last month have now been released. The items taken from Firle Place are thought to be worth in the region as £1m and include a rare Sèvres Pompadour marbled ground vase from c.1761.

THE new owners of the Newark International Antiques and Collectors' Fair, International Antiques & Collectors' Fairs Ltd (IACF), have booked a series of TV adverts to promote the forthcoming fair.

THE massive antiques and collectors’ fair held six times a year at RAF Swinderby since 1995 is to move to the Lincoln Showground for all future events.

DELOITTE, the leading accounting and business consulting firm, has recently turned its attention to the antique furniture market and concluded it is a good time to acquire a “proven asset at a low price”.

DAVID Lester’s Florida company International Fine Art Expositions have announced that Freya Simms, who recently stepped down after four years as show director of Olympia’s antique fairs, is joining them as director of sales and marketing at Expoships and IFAE.

THE Antiques Are Green campaign in the UK has spawned its first ‘antiques are green’ fair – in America.

THE so-called Frog Service made by Wedgwood for Catherine the Great was one of the most prestigious creations by the Staffordshire entrepreneur and one that helped forge his international reputation.

HAUGHTON Fairs are to move their venerable International Ceramics Fair & Seminar from its long-time home at the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly to the Mall Galleries on Carlton House Terrace, SW1.

GLASS collector Graham Cooley, auctioneer Will Farmer and glass specialist Andy McConnell have offered to spearhead a fundraising drive for a new home for the Broadfield House Glass Museum collection.

Scrimshaw, or carved bone and ivory, is very collectable, but the signature and scenes on this 7in (18cm) long whale’s tooth put it in a special league.

Christie’s have announced a premium-inclusive £1.2bn ($1.8bn) in sales for the first six months of 2009, down 35 per cent on the same period last year, when results were £1.8bn ($3.5bn).

Second quarter results for Sotheby’s in 2009 show operating revenues down almost half to $167.3m on the first three months of the year thanks largely to the decline in auction totals.