Dealers

A jumble of names scratched into a piece of oak by naughty children (or possibly adults) has been discovered on the underside of an antique table in the latest exhibition at WR Harvey in Witney.

Specialist auction house Dix Noonan Webb bought the dedicated Britannia Medal Fair in 2018 from the event’s previous owner, Mark Carter.

MADAM – A definition in your glossary is incorrect (ATG No 2382). Strictly, the terms verso and recto apply to books, meaning the left and right pages. Certainly they don’t both apply ‘to the back of a picture’.

An intriguing find by a dealer new to TEFAF Maastricht leads a look at some of the highlights on offer at the huge event.

As we approach a crunch vote on Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal, a no-deal result is still a possibility – so too the prospect of an extension to the Article 50 process beyond the March 29 deadline. As the selection of comments and advice from across the trade suggests, the art and antiques sector, like businesses up and down the country, is preparing for every eventuality.

This 1962 photograph of artist Lucio Fontana, below, is included in the UK’s first solo show of works by Ugo Mulas (1928-73).

Among the 70-plus exhibitors attending the Textile Society’s annual Antique and Vintage Textiles Fair at the Armitage Centre in Manchester on Sunday, April 14, is fan specialist Mary Cooper.

Old Master art dealer Mark Weiss began exhibiting at TEFAF Maastricht in 1988. But for all the important 16th and 17th century portraits Weiss has sold at the Dutch fair since then, few are likely to have made a local connection quite like his gallery’s star object for 2019.

William Wyllie’s 1917 watercolour HMS New Zealand – The Sixteen Point Turn at Jutland was among the stand-out sales at the inaugural Connect Art Fair where it was offered for a price in the region of £20,000.

Annual BADA event includes copy of Reni work commissioned by the pope or a cardinal.

A first-edition presentation copy of Jacob’s Room (1922) by Virginia Woolf bearing an inscription to her sister Vanessa Bell is on offer for £85,000 at Peter Harrington’s exhibition In Her Own Words: Works by Exceptional Women.

It’s 12 months since Oliver Moss took the helm of fourth-generation Chinese and Japanese art dealership Sydney L. Moss. A busy year culminated in Moss making Japanese sculpture discoveries that will form the centrepiece of the dealership’s 2019 TEFAF Maastricht stand.

Art dealer Karen Taylor is among the exhibitors at this month’s BADA 2019 (March 20-26).

Hill House Antiques & Decorative Arts has launched a pop-up shop in Kensington Church Street.

A rare Georgian invalid’s ‘chair lift’ is one of the highlights at the Scone Palace Antiques & Fine Art Fair.

Tony Parkinson, who died suddenly just after Christmas, at the age of 75, was a much-respected and well-loved book dealer in Southport for over 40 years. He opened Parkinson’s Books in its current location on Lord Street in 1981, specialising in antiquarian books, of which he had an encyclopaedic knowledge.

Sarah Delves of Bags of Glamour is an exhibitor at the next Art & Antiques for Everyone fair (April 4-7).