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THE opportunities for the art and antiques trade in the current retail market are fundamentally good. This is the conclusion drawn by Paul Flatters of the Future Foundation.

Hislop’s Art Sales Index, one of the oldest art price databases, has been sold to arts publisher LTB Holding Ltd.

THE management team of IFAE’s Palm Beach shows is to take on new responsibilities as Lorenzo Rudolf takes on a new role in the organisation.

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.

TRADE minister Lord Sainsbury has told the House of Commons culture committee that implementing Droit de Suite effectively and comparatively cheaply is now the big challenge facing the Government.

A named designer and good provenance sent this oak refectory table and benches, right, to the highest price at Woolley & Wallis’ sale on March 2.

by Alex CaponMARKET-FRESH pictures in good condition by major names...meet all three of these criteria and success is virtually assured. And, as was evident at the March 1 sale held in Exeter by Bearne’s (15/10% buyer’s premium), two out of three ain’t bad.

GORRINGES were celebrating a house record last Thursday following the sale of a rediscovered late work by John William Godward (1858-1922) for £440,000.

WITH their new magazine-format catalogues and weekend viewings and sales, Christie’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) are currently making a conscious effort to present themselves to the buying public as a customer-friendly art and antiques retailer.

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.

Douglass & Aikman’s Almanack and Register for the Island of Jamaica..., printed in Kingston in 1780, contains a ‘Kalendar of Months, Sabbaths and Holy Days, the Hebrews or Jews observe & keep...’ as well as the names of Jewish holidays in English and Hebrew type and is one of the very earliest instances of Hebrew types being used in the Western hemisphere in publications intended to be used by Jews – Ann Woodland’s almanac of the previous year having been the first.

Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), the First World War leader known as The Tiger, and also famous as the editor of L’Aurore, who published Zola’s J’Accuse at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, was the subject of an unusual sale at Osenat (15% buyer’s premium) in Fontainebleau on February 13.

by Richard FalkinerThe calendar year gets off to an early start with sales in New York in January and then nothing much happens until spring is heralded by March. Nature abhors a vacuum and there is always somebody who fills the slot.

THE new-style collectors’ sales held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt (15% buyer’s premium) at Taunton are proving a winning format, with wide-ranging, briefly catalogued but illustrated lots with low reserves.

Headlining proceedings at Andrew Hartley, Ilkley on February 16-17 was a pair of late 18th century 8in (20cm) barrelled pistols by Ketland & Co, formerly in the prestigious collection of Keith Neal, dispersed by Christie's South Kensington in 2000 and 2001.

When Bonhams embarked on their first dispersal of the mammoth Zorensky collection of First Period Worcester, there were murmurings in the trade (and presumably some crossed fingers in the saleroom’s ceramics department).

Good corkscrews continue to attract solid sums. Alongside the likes of Thomas Lund and Edwin Cotterill, Robert Jones is one of the big names of the English patent market, if only because his so-called ‘Robert Jones II’ is among the rarest and most valuable of all corkscrews.

The recent competition seen for rare First World War silks was repeated at the sale conducted by Specialised Postcard Auctions (10% buyer’s premium) of Cirencester on December 6.

A local estate was the source of some fine Meiji ivories sold by Cheshire auctioneers Frank Marshall (15% buyer’s premium) of Knutsford on January 11.