News topics

Japanese works of art sales will no longer be held on a regular basis by Sotheby’s New York. Specialist Sachiko Hori will be retained by the company, while her co-director Ryoichi Iida will become a consultant.

TRADING Standards officers have issued a warning to the trade to be on the alert for fake Royal Doulton. Several pieces have come to light over the past few months, including Lambeth Ware.

First icollector close their London operation, now sothebys.com consolidate service in New York: Growing acceptance that the US antiques trade and collectors are happier to complete transactions online than their UK counterparts is illustrated by two major moves that have just been announced.

IN DAYS when a 70 per cent selling rate is considered reasonable, a country auction enjoying a 90 per cent success rate obviously had something special going for it.

Furniture of all nationalities has been much in evidence in London over the past few weeks as late November/early December is traditionally one of the two periods in the year when the London rooms offer their best English and Continental fare.

Oak and other vernacular and country furniture formed a large slice of Sotheby’s Gwynn Collection and had some input into their R. A. Lee collection.

Jewellery is a classic Christmas seller and, combined with the current demand for Art Nouveau this hallmarked silver Charles Horner pendant, right, was always a likely seller.

What is reckoned by the auctioneers to be a new auction record for Russian furniture was set at Christie’s December 13 Continental furniture sale in London when this 22in (56cm) wide silver- and ormolu- mounted faceted cut steel centre table, c.1785-90, sold for £620,000 to a European dealer after a battle between seven telephones.

She lived by her pen, but died by her brush. If Charlotte Brontë had been remotely skilled as a portrait artist she might not have turned to literary characterisations.

Modern British in date, but blissfully unaffected by Fauvism, Cubism, Vorticism and just about every other ‘ism’ that was changing the face of Western art, Edgar Hunt (1876-1953) enjoys perennial popularity among picture buyers with more traditional tastes.

The more collectable the antique, the greater difference small details make to the final price. This general rule may explain the contrasting prices on these two glass bowls, all but identical in date, c.1800, form and origin, Cork or Waterford.

Sold for £90,000 as part of the November 15 Natural History & Travel sale at Sotheby’s was an album of 162 conchological watercolours put together c.1764-82 by Mlle. J.C. Xavery, a miniaturist of Dutch descent and probably the sister of the flower and landscape painter Jacob Xavery, who was working in Paris around the same time.

AXA Art have sent their clients a guide to beating crime following a series of raids on galleries, culminating in a $350,000 theft from a Bond Street gallery in London at the beginning of December.

THE Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is to be the new home for Federico Barocci’s £1.3m drawing Study for The Institution of the Eucharist.

Sotheby’s board of directors has told its managers to meet with representatives of Alfred Taubman to discuss the possible sale of his controlling stake in the company.

THE best seller at Tennants’ sale on November 22-23 in the Yorkshire Dales was consigned by a Yorkshire family with connections to the famous silversmith who made it.

Selling art is not all that has been going on at Finarte in the past few weeks. The auction house has recently won a landmark appeal against the Italian state which will ensure that auctioneers do not lose out when the state pre-empts a work of art.

The inaugural specialist sale of some 350 character jugs at the Stoke on Trent ceramics auctioneers Potteries Specialist Auction (12.5% buyer’s premium) on November 17 was, said the auctioneers, a great success with specialist UK dealers and collectors flocking to the Cobridge rooms.

Dealers often complain about the way that private bidders get over-excited at auctions and pay ridiculously inflated prices they wouldn’t dream of giving in a gallery. But for once it looks - or rather looked – as if a major player in the trade had suffered a serious attack of auction fever following Jermyn Street agent Guy Morrison’s terse admission that he was now the happy owner of £9.4m Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) portrait.

COINCIDING with London’s Asia week, the 507-lot sale held by Gilding’s (12.5% buyer’s premium) at Market Harborough on November 13 featured this blue and white six-character mark and period Qianlong (1736-95) meiping, right, on its front cover.