News topics

A MASSIVE Queen Anne cistern, which set a new auction high for English silver when it sold for £2.2m in 2010, is now on display at the Tudor mansion Temple Newsam in Leeds after it was acquired for the nation.

THE final lot of 233 offered at Michael Bowman's latest sale at the Chudleigh Town Hall, Devon was this limewood carving of a goose wing attributed to the Anglo-German artist Sir Hubert von Herkomer (1849-1914).

Prints by Edward Wadsworth (1889-1949) are not a common sight on the market, but the Yorkshire-born artist who became a leading exponent of Vorticism was a prominent printmaker in the early stage of his career.

THE Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts have decided to dissolve the controversial Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board in early 2012.

A LONG-running anti-trust complaint against the Andy Warhol Foundation – one that caused them to close the authentication service – concerned a work denied twice by their board.

POLICE are appealing for help after 27 Chinese works of art were stolen from Stroud Auction Rooms in Gloucestershire a day before they were due to be sold.

DETECTIVE work by a Cornish auctioneer has led to a jail sentence for a 40-year-old former art teacher who defrauded galleries and members of the public by selling fakes.

A KENT auction house has withdrawn a sacred Aboriginal artefact from sale after intervention from cultural experts and the Australian High Commission.

KANGXI and Qing dynasty rhinoceros horn libation cups feature regularly at UK sales devoted to Asian works of art, but this 18th century example appeared for sale at Cottone's of Geneseo in upstate New York.

A SILVER medal awarded to the Master of Admiral Lord Nelson's flagship HMS Victory, who was at the ship's helm throughout the Battle of Trafalgar is to be sold by Nantwich, Cheshire, auctioneers Peter Wilson.

A GOLD button which links the two most significant military figures in the foundation of the United States of America – George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette – will be sold in Leicestershire on November 1.

THIS rare-to-the-market 1913 Dieppe painting by Camden Town Group painter Charles Ginner (1878-1952) was recently rediscovered in an important Canadian collection.

THE history of France’s famous Sleeper Car Company was commemorated in a single-owner sale at Christie’s in Paris last month.

A SURVEY conducted by LAPADA has revealed just how much the art and antiques trade relies on the cheque.

FOURTEEN antiques of ‘significant, cultural and historic value’ have been recovered and two men arrested in connection with three high-profile country house thefts in 2009.

IN what promises to be the biggest test of the overall health of the Victorian picture market for some years, Lyon & Turnbull will sell the entire contents of Old Battersea House, the London home of the Forbes family, in Edinburgh on November 1.

THE existence of the elephant – “nature’s great masterpiece... the only harmless great thing”, to use John Donne’s famous description – was well known to medieval Europeans, but captive pachyderms had disappeared from the continent shortly after the demise of the Roman Empire.

MADE by James A. Miller and Brother of Chicago to a design of c.1898, Frank Lloyd Wright’s 18in (45cm) high spherical copper urn worked with repoussé panels of interlocking geometric decoration, shown here, has become an icon of the American Arts & Crafts movement.

As ever, there was a large amount of Doulton Lambeth on offer at Bonhams’ latest Ceramics Design sale.

Modern British art played its part in the recent London print sales when ‘The Merry-Go-Round’ by Cyril Power (1872-1951) drew strong bidding at Sotheby’s on September 27 and ‘Adonis in Y fronts’, a 1963 screenprint by Richard Hamilton (1922-2011), led the day at Christie’s South Kensington on September 20.