Obituaries

TED Adams, who has died aged 72, helped Antiques Trade Gazette Coins and Medals correspondent Richard Falkiner set up what is thought to have been the first independent courier service in the UK.

Susie Cooper’s (1902-1995) long career as a ceramics designer spanned 70 years and her output ranged over many styles including 1920s lustre, colourful blocky Deco, curvy shapes and sgraffito decoration.

The trade were in mourning last week following the deaths of New York-based dealer Tom Devenish, aged 84, Guildford dealer Charles Traylen, aged 96 and London silver dealer Michael Koopman, aged 56.

This sale comprised some 308 lots of which 300 had all come from the home of the late Brian Donald Hewens Miller.

UK: Sotheby’s horological sales always incorporate a section on mechanical music. Their latest event featured material from a well known, leading figure in this trade: the late Jack Donovan, the Portobello Road dealer in tinplate toys, automata and musical boxes, who died in 1998.

UK: WHEN diplomat’s widow Elsa Elizabeth Bowker died last September, her obituary in The Times quoted the saying that “people came to London for Harrods, Buckingham Palace and Lady Bowker”.

How a trade veteran fixed rate for his estate left to charity... UK: THE great question that every dealer must address when death approaches is what to do with all those antiques accumulated in the home after a lifetime of business.

UK: The National Arts Collection Fund has announced that it is to oversee the bequest of 250 works from the studio of the visionary painter Cecil Collins (1908-89) to about 50 galleries and museums across the country.

UK: THE late Bob Ewers is remembered fondly by devotees of diecast toys as one of the key players in founding the UK’s first static model collectors club in Maidenhead in 1969, and there was an enormous response to the dispersal of his collection at the Lewes salerooms of Wallis & Wallis (15 per cent buyer‘s premium) on February 12.