Art and antiques news from 2015

The hefty guarantee paid out by Sotheby’s to secure the Alfred Taubman collection meant the stakes were running high for the first and most financially crucial tranche of the four-part auction staged at Sotheby’s New York.

Police are investigating the theft of a distinctive painting from a house in the Old Town, Hastings.

Many who viewed a Barkentin and Krall chalice at JS Auctions in Bodicote, Oxfordshire will have hoped to win it close to its £300-500 estimate.

Colnaghi, the venerable London Old Master dealership, is to merge with art dealers Coll & Cortés (London and Madrid).

The British Antique Dealers’ Association has sold its Knightbridge headquarters for a “multi-million pound sum” as it continues to evolve into a proactive 21st century trade association.

As suggested by an inscription to the socle reading ‘Gallé, Expo 1900’, this ovoid pedestal vase offered by Hansons of Etwall in Derbyshire had been created in the studios of Emile Gallé (1846-1904) for the ‘Exposition Universelle de Paris’ in 1900.

Online auction site Paddle8, who recently took space in Mayfair, have secured $34m in new funding.

The three founders of ‘Antiques Young Guns’, Gail McLeod, Mark Hill and George Johnson, are to hand the running of the organisation to its members.

A Rembrandt portrait sold in a £35m private sale negotiated by Sotheby’s will be staying in the UK after the overseas buyer withdrew their application to export the painting.

Nottingham-based John Pye Auctions are expanding into Mayfair.

Two single-owner collections of Martinware – each exceptional in their own way – will appear for sale on either side of the Atlantic this autumn.

Leading specialists will debate the use of scientific testing in Asian art at an event to coincide with Asian Art in London (November 5-14).

Scientific, medical and natural history books from the library of the Royal Institution are to be sold at Christie’s on December 1.

London’s Frieze Week, an annual high point of Modern and Contemporary art fairs and auctions, will take place one week earlier than usual in 2016, as the organisers of Frieze fairs have moved their dates forward to avoid clashing with the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur.

Staff at The Swan at Tetsworth say it is ‘business as usual’ despite the dramatic ram-raid at the Oxfordshire antiques centre last weekend.

There was drama at the Stonepark auction rooms of Rendells near Ashburton when this Isnik fritware tile was hammered down at £155,000 at their latest sale.

A small Dame Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) sculpture bought at a Christie’s auction by The Pier Arts Centre in Orkney has now gone on display.

A new senior management team has been appointed to take on responsibility for the group of businesses that includes Dreweatts, Baldwin’s and Mallett, ATG has learned.

Legendary London jewellery, silver and object d’art dealership SJ Phillips are planning to leave their landmark Mayfair store after almost one-and-a-half centuries.

Dreweatts are to offer 14 boxes from an important American collection of 18th and 19th century European gold boxes as part of a December 3 sale titled Iconic Jewels & Treasures.