Dealers

AFTER the first couple of days, all nine dealers participating in London Sculpture Week (which ended on June 18) reported a great deal of interest in their exhibitions with old clients joined by museum people and, most importantly, new customers.

IN one of the most crowded week’s in London’s arts and antiques calendar, the Grosvenor House and Olympia fairs are still in full swing. Some may ask if we need more in the way of dealers’ selling exhibitions but they would get a dusty reply from the trade.

LAPADA have introduced an interest-free credit scheme to the portfolio of benefits on offer to members.

CAMBRIDGESHIRE dealers Simon and Penny Rumble generally deal with the trade and by appointment only from Causeway End Farmhouse, Chittering, but they have just converted a barn into a new showroom and celebrate from June 17 to 20 with a selling exhibition to which everyone is welcome.

EAST Anglian early furniture specialist Andrew Singleton has, for many years, held a popular pre-Christmas selling exhibition at his shop, Suffolk House Antiques, in Yoxford High Street, and following the consistent success of these shows he is staging a summer version, opening on June 12 and running for a week.

HERE is some information about one of the unqualified recent successes of the London ceramics scene, Eight Days in June, a concurrent series of exhibitions held by four leading Kensington dealers from June 7 to 15.

BRUSSELS have two similar events this month, both of which are festivals rather than fairs, with specialist dealers mounting concurrent selling exhibitions, promoted jointly, and also inviting overseas specialists in the same discipline to show as guests in the Brussels galleries.

FIRST dealers were subjected to the data protection scam – now the trade are being alerted to a health and safety con.

CHRISTIE’S have announced that as well as appointing Old Master dealers Hall and Knight as international directors, they have also acquired the firm’s New York galleries.

AT the beginning of September John Eskenazi, one of the leading dealers in Indian, Tibetan and South-East Asian art, will leave his gallery at 15 Old Bond Street, London W1 and deal by appointment only.

MAYFAIR antiquities dealer Rupert Wace is mounting possibly the most captivating June selling exhibition when, as one of the participants of the first London Sculpture Week, he presents Pharaoh’s Creatures: Animals from Ancient Egypt, at 14 Old Bond Street, London W1.

INCREASINGLY, London is showing its teeth as one of the world’s nuclei for international Contemporary art. And, with last week’s opening of two substantial commercial art galleries, its status is going only one way – upwards.

ALTHOUGH many of the items on offer by the nine dealers taking part in London Sculpture Week (June 10-18) are antique, with some dating back more than 5000 years, there will be a few contemporary pieces.

INSURERS Axa Art have promised to settle claims linked to art lost in last week’s fire at Momart’s London warehouse as soon as possible.

POLICE have arrested a woman wanted for questioning in connection with a series of thefts from London antiques shops earlier this year.

INEVITABLY fairs dominate June in London but there is also much activity in the galleries and showrooms with dealers taking advantage of the influx of serious collectors and trade into the capital.

SPECIALISING in what the name implies, British Import Antiques, who deal out of a wooden Belle Epoque pavilion at 23, Boulevard du Parc on Ile de Jatte in Neuilly, just west of Paris, are holding two open-door weekends on June 4 to 6 and June 11-13 when they hope to dispose of more than 1000 items of stock.

KENT English furniture dealer Michael Sim holds his fifth Special Summer Exhibition of Scottish & English Barometers throughout the month of June at his showrooms in Royal Parade, Chislehurst.

MAYFAIR dealers in things tribal, unusual and exotic, the Gordon Reece Gallery, are currently holding one of their periodic selling exhibitions of antique Chinese furniture at 16 Clifford Street, W1.

APPEAL Court judges have lifted the punishment given to a London dealer convicted of handling £1.5m worth of stolen silver after hearing how he had committed the crimes in order to pay for his wife’s cancer treatment.