Art and antiques news from 2010

TECHNOLOGY is increasingly important in the art market but a pair of oils by the Anglo-Australian artist William Blamire Young (1862-1935), is believed to be the first significant work identified and consigned to auction through Christie’s iPhone application.

Special Auction Services (SAS), founded in 1991, is moving to larger premises in October. Currently based in Kennetholme, Midgham, near Reading they are relocating six miles away to New Greenham Park, Newbury.

THIEVES have stolen a safe containing £25,000 worth of silver from a church in Woodmangreen, just north of Midhurst, Sussex.

THE five City of London livery companies with particular connections with wood (Carpenters, Furniture-Makers, Joiners, Turners and Upholders) are currently raising funds for the Arboretum Trust with a charity auction titled Branching Out.

CHISWICK Auctions are set to sell one of the most important early paintings by the German Expressionist Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966) to have come to market in recent years.

A UNIQUE archive of original Enid Blyton material is being offered for sale by her elder daughter's estate at Ilkley auctioneers Hartley's on September 15.

ATG readers spend £1.1bn a year on art and antiques, £800m of it at auction.

IT looks like a flying saucer, and to those viewing it on the monastery wall in Verona where it had hung since the Middle Ages, it can have had hardly less of an impact.

ATG has learnt that the government is seriously considering withdrawing export licences for much of the old rhinoceros horn sold in the UK.

MOST antiques that include the “parts and derivatives” of endangered species enjoy an exemption from CITES controls known as the “worked item” derogation.

IN a confiscation hearing earlier this month, Maurice Taylor, the man jailed last March for three years for selling a fake Lowry painting, was warned that he faced a further ten years in prison unless he paid back almost £1.2m deemed to be the proceeds of fraud.

PURITAN spoons are not uncommon survivors in English silver but, for reasons still largely unknown, Scottish examples are very rare. To date, only nine hallmarked or provincial examples are known.

THE trial of a man accused of the burglary of a number of remote country houses in East Anglia has begun in Ipswich Crown Court.

THE Viennese mahogany commode, pictured here at the top, has undergone a remarkable transformation since it sold along with its companion pair at auction in 1993 as part of the Thurn and Taxis sale.

INTERNATIONAL Antiques & Collectors Fairs Ltd (IACF) plan to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their flagship event, the Newark International Antiques & Collectors Fair, in October.

FOUR sketches by Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais, found tucked inside covers of Led Zeppelin LPs, have been withdrawn from sale at Chilcotts auctioneers in Tiverton, Devon, because of a “misunderstanding over ownership” according to the auctioneers.

ON Wednesday, September 8, Kent auctioneers Ibbett Mosely will hold their first sale in new premises at 125 High Street, Sevenoaks, Kent TN13 1UT.

A RESPECTED Asian art specialist has defended the sale of rhinoceros horn libation cups at auction.

CHRISTIE’S have announced worldwide sales of £1.7bn ($2.57m) for the first half of 2010 – 46 per cent up on the same period for 2009.

DISGRACED New York art dealer Lawrence Salander has been jailed for a minimum of six years after pleading guilty to orchestrating one of the world’s biggest ever art frauds.