Events and conferences

SCOTLAND Yard is to put a £500,000 Aladdin’s Cave of stolen antiques on show after a two-year investigation into a £30m burglary ring.

Two one-day events putting the spotlight on art crime will be held in the capital in May.

ONE dealer who concurs with the findings in a recent BADA poll that shop exhibitions play an increasingly important part in business is Wiltshire ceramics specialist (and BADA member) Andrew Dando.

DEALERS who have been waiting in vain for a sustained up-turn in business are being urged to register for the fourth Art of Dealing conference on May 16.

DISTINGUISHED Kensington early English pottery specialist Jonathan Horne, whose stock is as popular with his many American collectors as on the home market, returns from the New York Ceramics Fair to his shop at 66c Kensington Church Street, London W8 from February 22 to March 5 for his 25th annual exhibition.

A CONFERENCE addressing the special problems facing the art and antiques trade will be held at the Earls Court Conference Centre in London on Monday, May 16.

The student section of the British Antique Furniture Restorers’ Association will hold their annual conference at Oxford and Cherwell College, Oxpens Road, Oxford on March 14.

NOW a permanent fixture on the capital’s art scene, the seventh annual Art on Paper Fair will be held from February 3 to 6 at the Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7. It will be opened at noon on the 3rd by one of last year’s more colourful characters, Spectator editor, and lapsed Tory shadow spokesman for the Arts, Boris Johnson.

The Victoria and Albert Museum will open a new Portrait Miniatures Gallery on March 2.

LAUNCHED with a deal of success last year, when it attracted 10,000 visitors, COLLECT 2005 will be held at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum from January 12 to 17.

LAST year Fran Foster launched her new event, the National Fine Art & Antiques Fair, at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre and, from January 19 to 23, it returns to the Forum, which is arguably the most popular of the NEC’s many halls for antiques fixtures.

THE last of the four annual selling shows of Japanese woodblock prints at The Japanese Gallery, 66D Kensington Church Street, London W8, is Cats, Birds and Flowers which opened earlier this month and continues until February 28, 2005.

“Business has been good, but to achieve this I have had to work extremely hard.” This is how Chris Beetles summed up 2004 and, having already taken over £500,000 in sales from his renowned annual exhibition of British illustrators, he is ending the year on a bullish note.

Hosted by ATG at the City Flogger in the City of London, the event brought together 20 teams from all areas of the art and antiques world for a light-hearted charity event which nevertheless caused some serious head-scratching.

THE international Asian art community descended on London from November 4-12 to battle for the best quality Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Southeast Asian material the major houses and dealers could muster during Asian Art in London.

SOUTHAMPTON Institute has two reasons to celebrate this week: its newly adopted status as a university college, granted on November 1, and the awarding of a number of prizes to its fine arts valuation students.

THE winners of the Asian Art in London Outstanding Work of Art Awards, sponsored by the Antiques Trade Gazette, were announced last week.

FOR the first time conservation specialists will participate in the Dorking Street Festival.

BUSINESS could not be better for Simon Spero, the Kensington Church Street, London W8 18th century porcelain specialist who opened his annual exhibition on Tuesday last week (October 5) at noon.

THREE leading international dealers in antique needlework are getting together in New York later this month for a special selling exhibition – The Admirable Art of the Needle: Samplers & Embroideries 1650-1850.