North America

STAYING in New York, dealers in Japanese works of art Flying Cranes Antiques hold a selling exhibition of Japanese Ikebana baskets at their galleries within the Manhattan Art and Antiques Center, 1050 Second Avenue at 56th Street, until January 31.

THE veteran New York firm of fair organisers Wendy Management, a family firm who started putting shows together in 1934, are going rapidly upmarket, and they are taking some well-known European dealers with them.

REGARDED by the professionals as the place to spot trends, New York’s double weekend Triple Pier Antiques Show, on November 8 and 9 and then November 15 and 16, pulled in its best crowds since the 1990s and private buying proved very strong.

SILVER, VERTU AND RUSSIAN WORKS OF ART £1 = $1.67: Christie’s (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) New York silver department has reasons to be cheerful: their October 21 sale, which saw selling rates of 78 per cent by lot and 82 by value for a premium-inclusive total of $5.95m (£3.56m) was boosted further when New York dealers Shrubsole bought the magnificent Charles II silver-gilt toilet service once in the collection of J.P. Morgan for a low-estimate $450,000 (£269,460) after the sale.

WITHDRAWN from sale at the eleventh hour, a recently-discovered portfolio of late 18th century topographical watercolours of Canada have been sold by private treaty to Library and Archives Canada and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.

WITH vendors finding greater confidence (and, in some cases, greater incentives) to offer blue chip works, both Christie’s and Sotheby’s mounted strong sales of Impressionist and Modern art in New York last week. Ahead of this week’s sales of Contemporary art, the two big players both improved substantially upon last year’s figures and posted artists records for Modigliani, Léger, Klimt, Jawlensky and Moore against a backdrop of solid levels of demand.

Walking may be an unfashionably slow mode of transport in today’s time-pressured world, but lengthy periods spent on foot in past centuries were made more pleasurable by a vast array of walking aids. This material is now seriously collected and a cluster of cane collections have appeared on the market of late.

USA: NEW YORK’s top antiques centre, the Manhattan Art and Antiques Center at 1050 Second Avenue (between 55th and 56th Streets), presents a special celebration Fall in Manhattan from October 23 to 31, when a selection of top dealers from the 100 housed in the building present selling shows of recent acquisitions.

The fair with the best chance of giving New York and the trade a much-needed lift: I REMEMBER clearly two years ago in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in Manhattan one of the most severe tests for the international trade was the cancellation of London organisers Brian and Anna Haughton’s International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show, America’s top antiques fair.

HAVING run antique furniture businesses in Hampshire and the Midlands, Max Salisbury upped sticks two years ago to make his fortune in North Carolina. Looking at events in America over the past two years his timing could not have been worse, but now he has successfully established a business at 1102 North Main Street, High Point (Tel: +1 336 883 1494) where he displays his speciality – expertly re-upholstered 19th century English furniture in “natural and uncluttered” room settings.

USA: The reputation of Portsmouth-based Northeast Auctions (15% buyer’s premium) has predominantly been built on selling Americana, but this New Hampshire auction house hope to target greater numbers of UK and European collectors and dealers by including more European material in their five major annual sales.

VINTAGE fashion seems to be one of the most vogueish collecting areas internationally, and I hear serious fashionistas queue up for hours to get among the frocks at the Manhattan Vintage Clothing Show, to be held on October 10 and 11 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in New York City.

At just over $12m (including premium) US auction house Doyle New York made a significant contribution to the series of Asian Art sales held in Manhattan last week with their September 16 auction of the F. Gordon Morrill collection of Chinese porcelain. They found buyers for 82 per cent of the 115 lots, but far and away the star attraction was this large 141/2in (37cm) high Yuan dynasty blue and white pilgrim flask of c.1345.

After 42 years as one of the American Midwest’s leading auction firms, Frank H. Boos Gallery have downsized operations, prompting a former employee to launch his own business in Detroit.

FLORIDA has a new quality fair with the launch next February of the Palm Beach Jewelry and Antique Show. It will be held from February 13 to 17 in the newly built Palm Beach Convention Center at West Palm Beach and is intended to become an annual event.

LONDON organisers Brian and Anna Haughton long ago conquered the Manhattan fairs scene, first with their flagship International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show, which celebrates its 15th anniversary next month, then with their specialist fine art and Asian art fairs.

International Fine Art Expositions are to repackage its portfolio of Palm Beach art and antiques fairs as the events move to a new venue for 2004. In an effort to distinguish the top-tier fairs from the proliferation of ‘tailgate’ events in southern Florida – and allowing IFAE’s vice-president Lorenzo Rudolf to place his own stamp on the fairs pioneered by David Lester – the three events held this year in a marquee will become two next year at the Palm Beach County Convention Center.

THE United States has taken a lead in art restitution by setting up a website to track Nazi-looted art. The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal which has just gone online, will provide a database of museums collections – 70 have signed up so far – for checks on art that disappeared in Europe between 1933 and 1945.

Representatives of a US company trading in class action certificates are coming to London to meet UK recipients of vouchers relating to the Sotheby’s/Christie’s price-fixing settlement in the USA.

US: STAR lot in the Stair Galleries of New York State sale scheduled for September 6 is this set of 10 George III mahogany dining chairs (2 + 8) originally owned by The Rt. Hon. the Viscount Downe at Wykeham Abbey in Yorkshire.