International

The 29th staging of TEFAF Maastricht will go down as a good edition of the fair with dealers reporting decent sales overall and the changes made for this year’s event meeting general approval among the standholders.

ATG reporter Frances Allitt took her first trip to TEFAF Maastricht and, as well as witnessing the colour, excitement and love for art and objects that pervade the fair, she also learned some valuable lessons from dealers and visitors.

An original example of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic sold for €185,000 at Whyte’s of Dublin yesterday. Estimated at €150,000-250,000, the document published by the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army was one of only 40-50 known copies left in existence and it drew competition from two phone bidders, one from Ireland and the other from the US who ended up as the successful buyer.

The global market for art and antiques may have dropped by seven per cent in sales by value last year, but this is “not a signal that the bubble has burst”, the art market’s leading economist told TEFAF 2016 delegates this morning.

With the preview of TEFAF 2016 now underway, ATG gives you a snapshot around the stands of the fair.

Tighter regulations surrounding fraud and money laundering are prompting French banks to close the euro accounts of some UK dealers and shippers.

A medieval ring long associated with Joan of Arc sold for £240,000 – almost 30 times its estimate – at Timeline Auctions in Bloomsbury on February 25.

Bonhams say they are “reorganising operations” after Magnus Renfrew, the company’s deputy chairman in Asia, was laid off along with seven other members of staff based in Hong Kong.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service have announced a new programme to “help reduce the overall ivory market”.

Paul Iribe’s ‘Nautile’ armchair is one of the most striking proto-Art Deco designs, with its sleek swept-back lines and low armrests formed as a tight nautilus shell spiral.

Four London dealers were made to deface valuable antiques after they imported objects into the US without declaring their ivory content.

The countryside of southern Burgundy, with its vineyards and Romanesque churches, might not be the first location that comes to mind for a tribal art fair.

The Art Loss Register (ALR) has located two paintings stolen from a home in Amsterdam in 2010.

Two of the best-known anthropomorphic creations of the celebrated Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter (1835-1918) resurfaced at Treadway Toomey in Oak Park, near Chicago, Illinois, on February 6.

A 1957 Ferrari 355 S Scaglietti sold at the Artcurial Motorcars auction for €32.1m (£24.7m) with premium to an international collector after “a tense, 11-minute bidding battle”.

A jury in New York lost their chance to rule on the first of several lawsuits against the Knoedler Gallery and its former director Ann Freedman when the suits were settled out of court.

Art Brussels’ first sale at its new location of Tour and Taxis, the same location as the BRAFA Art Fair, will run from April 22-24.

A previously unknown seventh edition of the Bay Psalm Book, published in Boston, 1693, with a provenance tied to Salem witch trial judge Jonathan Corwin and descendants of John Proctor, sold for $221,000 (£151,584) at a Swann sale in New York on February 4.

This 18½in (47cm) George II silver soup tureen by the goldsmith Paul de Lamerie featured in Doyle’s latest sale of furniture, works of art and Old Master paintings in New York.

Troubled dealership Mallett are to look for new galleries in London and New York after putting the blue-chip leases of both of their current premises up for sale.