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ASIAN Art in London will open with what promises to be a spectacular launch party at the Victoria & Albert Museum on Friday, November 5.

JUST shy of their bicentenary, Whytock and Reid, the Edinburgh furniture makers, were forced into liquidation earlier this year. Foreign competition put paid to a company established in 1807 by Richard Whytock and John Reid that, in its 19th and early 20th century glory days, furnished the great houses and castles of Scotland, often working in partnership with the architect Robert Lorimer.

NOW that few dealers can any longer afford routinely to buy pictures for stock, auctioneers, particularly provincial auctioneers, have become increasingly reliant on private individuals to take take up the slack at their art sales.

RIGHT: offered as the final lot of the day, this 21oz Guild of Handicrafts silver and enamel comport proved to be one of the stars of Clarke Gammon Wellers’ sale on September 7.

TO one side of this 4.75in (12cm) high early 19th century lustre and transfer printed jug are the legends No Corn Bill, Universal Suffrage, Annual Parliaments and Vote by Ballot.

IT may have been the peak of the summer holiday season, but it was business as usual at Mallams (15% buyer's premium) Gloucestershire rooms when the 515-lot sale on August 19 totalled in the region of £70,000.

Furniture from Hills House, Denham, the property of Sir John and Lady Mills, will be sold at auction by Hamptons of Godalming on October 20.

RIGHT: a folding plate from an 1847 first of James Clark Ross’ Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions, the two vols. bound in later polished calf gilt by Henry Young of Liverpool, which made £1200 in a Dominic Winter sale of August 25.

MONMOUTH dealer Nick Wheatley – a specialist in Arts & Crafts, as the name of his shop Our House 1860-1925, at 6-8 St. James Street, implies – has also beeen building up for a show.

CARAYOL'S (19.73/16.14% buyer’s premium) annual two-day sale at the Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz was staged this year in collaboration with Paris firm Boisgirard & Associés. With muted success; only a quarter of the 800 lots found takers for a hammer total of around €400,000 (£265,000).

ENGLISH Heritage successfully bid £11,500 for a portfolio of 47 photographs of the exterior and interior of the Crystal Palace in a Dominic Winter sale of August 25.

MY mention of Richard Gardner’s upcoming exhibition of Chinese antiques in Petworth, reminds me that the country’s biggest Asian celebration is not too far away. I am already starting to get information about this year’s annual Asian Art in London festival which will run from November 4 to 12.

BULKY Victorian brown furniture may be the least attractive subject at many sales, but the most expensive entry at Keys (10% buyer's premium) 1386-lot Norfolk outing on August 3-4 was a 9ft square (2.74m) mahogany library breakfront bookcase.

AFTER more than 35 years involvement in the art world, I have become rather blasé about a great deal of art, particularly Contemporary. However, last month the ‘wow’ factor returned, when as one of the judging panel for a wildlife art prize, I discovered the sculpture Urban Warrior, which is illustrated right.

IN rubbed contemporary sheep and with the fore-edges close cropped in some places, but generally in sound condition, a 1542 first edition of the scholar and dramatist Nicholas Udall’s translation of Erasmus’ compilation of ‘Apophthegmata’, as Apophthegmes, that is to saie, prompte, quicke, witty sayings, sold for £850 (Powell) in an Y Gelli sale of July 23.

TEMPTING though it is to say that word from the Specialised Postcard Auctions (10% buyer's premium) was lost in the post, this midsummer auction on July 5 has slipped through the Antiques Trade Gazette net until now. But the £23,000 sale should be recorded as one of the series which have, for years, been catering for this specialist market.

THERE are few things so distinctly American in the book auction world as the collections of ‘Oziana’ that arrive in the salerooms with remarkable regularity.

PART of a 12-vol. Winchester edition (1911-12) of the works of Jane Austen, bound in half red calf gilt by Sotherans, that made £3400 as part of the July 21 Lyon & Turnbull sale at Jordanstone.

THE National Art Collections Fund (Art Fund) has criticised the state of public collecting in the UK on the same day as announcing a £500,000 offer to help keep the Macclesfield Psalter in the UK.

WHAT should the art world do when the going gets tough? Many in the trade sit back and whine. Others go into battle. Those who do get up from their derrières and practise a little innovation and lots of enthusiasm often do well in the most difficult of periods.