North America

A man who had a 17th century Dutch panel painting stolen from his home more than 20 years ago has failed in an Appeal Court to win compensation from Christie’s, who offered the picture for sale in 1997. Key to the test case was Christie’s ability to show they had acted in good faith, adding further legal weight to the importance of due diligence.

Vectis, the largest toy auctioneer in the world, with a turnover of £5m, is to open in America. Bryan Goodall, who has owned the Teesside company for seven years, has recently acquired The Diecast Toy Exchange, an auction house based in York, Pennsylvania.

IT will be some months before many deals are clinched and further money changes hands, but with some exceptions I think the 61 top dealers at the tenth International Fine Art Fair in New York from May 9 to 14 found their stay in Manhattan profitable.

WHILE in New York for the International Fine Art Fair, I dropped into Mallett’s new shop at 929 Madison Avenue. It could not have a better location and it is glamorous enough to have already made its mark in this select corner of Manhattan.

AN ARRAY of elegant objects sold mostly within estimates at the Celebration of the English Country House auction at Sotheby’s New York (20/12% buyer’s premium) on April 30 and May 1.

It hardly qualifies as a book, but the data card book in which Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin recorded critical values for input into the lunar module computer during the Apollo XI mission of 1969, autograph data that enabled them to make the first moon landing, certainly qualifies as an historical technical document.

BEARING the simple, one-word title ‘Literature’, an April 8 sale held by Christie’s New York (19.5/10% buyer's premium) was mostly concerned with books of the 19th and 20th centuries. Earlier works were rather thin on the ground and the principle lot in this category, a 1632 second folio Shakespeare, with the ‘To the Reader’ leaf in facsimile and with some outer leaves washed and pressed before it was bound in crimson morocco gilt by Rivière, was left unsold on an estimate of $90,000-120,000.

THERE was a collective sigh of relief in the New York salerooms last week when, after a long period of uncertainty following the war in Iraq and turmoil in the stockmarkets, both Sotheby’s and Christie’s held impressive Part I Impressionist and Modern sales. Any fears that anti-French feeling would spill over in the salerooms proved unfounded after French artists took the top honours at both houses.

MORE than 200 dealers, mainly from New England, will gather at the Concert Field of Waterloo village, Stanhope, New Jersey over the weekend of May 17 and 18 for the state’s largest and oldest outdoor fair.

A JUNE 3 New York court hearing will rule whether Sotheby’s and Christie’s should pay $40m compensation to clients who bought and sold at their auctions outside the US during the 1990s.

May 2003 will see the largest migration of antique dealers in Toronto’s history as the 25-year lease on the city’s Harbourfront Antique Market ends and the market’s 50 dealers move to two new homes in the heart of the city’s tourist and entertainment district.

Minton did majolica just a bit better than anyone else – not just in their large monumental and sculptural pieces but also in the smaller and more mundane wares.

NOTED New York specialists in Japanese works of art Flying Cranes are not only showing at the International Asian Art Fair from March 28 to April 2 at the Seventh Regiment Armory, they also hold an exhibition of exceptional Japanese studio ceramics by 19th century court artists at their main showroom, Gallery 58 at the Manhattan Art & Antiques Center, 1050 Second Avenue at 56th Street.

PICTURES of dogs are big business as Bonhams’ & Doyle’s sale of Dogs in Art in New York on February 11 highlighted. And an artist frequently featured in these New York sales brought James Adam (15% buyer’s premium) of Dublin success on March 12.

April 12 marks the 42nd anniversary of man’s first space flight by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, and Swann Galleries of New York have chosen that date to launch their first space exploration sale.

MORE than 250 dealers from across the US, Canada and Europe will stand at the 27th Annual Chicago O’Hare Spring Antiques Show at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, Rosemont, Illinois from April 25 to 27.

WEST Palm Beach, Florida has become quite an international cultural destination in the past few years, largely due to the energy of local fair organisers International Fine Art Expositions, who have successfully staged the Palm Beach International Art and Antique Fair and ArtPalmBeach, an acclaimed Modern and Contemporary show.

THE majolica market has long been underpinned by American collectors and on April 4-5 Indiana-based Michael Strawser will be selling British, American and Continental pieces at the Alderfer Auction Center in Hatfield Pennsylvania.

Baldwin, Markov and M&M Numismatics is a bit of a mouthful, but this troika held their sale also in New York on January 16. It consisted mostly of classical coins. The antics of the Roman Circus would have given modern hunt protesters something to think about.

TOP London specialist in English pottery Jonathan Horne exhibits at major fairs in London and New York and consistently comes up with top-of-the range stock, which he generally sells very well indeed.