Organisations

THE National Association of Valuers and Auctioneers (NAVA) are holding their annual forum for chattels auctioneers and valuers – or anyone with an interest in the industry – at The Belfry, West Midlands just off the M42 on May 9.

The board appointed to represent the interests of arts and antiques members at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors found itself out in the cold last week following a prolonged dispute with the executive body of the organisation.

Given the disparity between the global ambitions of the RICS as an international regulatory body and the specific requirements of a small group of professional art and antique auctioneers and valuers within its membership, perhaps the present stalemate should come as no surprise.

A MAN who stole antiques worth more than £1.2m from country houses across the country has been jailed for nine years.

THE case of a hacker who stole more than £180,000 from eBay users has highlighted weaknesses in PayPal’s procedures.

AUCTION Atrium, the Kensington-based auction house established in 2006, have become a member of professional body The Society of Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers.

THE U.S. Supreme Court in Washington has delivered a significant blow to Tiffany & Co’s bid to stop the sale of counterfeit jewellery on eBay.

FUNDING for the Portable Antiquities Scheme is to be cut by 15 per cent in real terms over the next four years, with the biggest impact likely to be on staff costs.

THE association of art and antiques dealers LAPADA has appointed Lord Chadlington, founder of PR giant Shandwick, as their new chairman.

PARIS furniture dealer Hervé Aaron was removed as President of France’s Syndicat National des Antiquaires (SNA) at its AGM on October 25 – to be replaced by the man he ousted two years ago, Christian Deydier.

THE latest Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ (RICS) survey points to prices picking up slightly for mid-range goods at auction in the UK provinces.

THE Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) have issued further important guidelines regarding the sale of antique rhinoceros horn.

CHARLES Hampshire of Peter Francis auctioneers in Carmarthen has won the NAVA National Auctioneer of the Year Award.

THE government are to refuse nearly all future applications for the export of old rhinoceros horn sold in the UK.

ATG readers spend £1.1bn a year on art and antiques, £800m of it at auction.

ANTIQUES Trade Gazette has won a Green Apple media award for its promotion of the Antiques Are Green campaign.

WINNER of the Country Life-LAPADA Object of the Year, announced last week at the London International Fine Art Fair at Olympia, was the so-called Hausburg cabinet belonging to Kensington Church Street dealers Butchoff Antiques.

LAPADA chairman, the Earl Howe, 59, pictured here, has been appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health in the Coalition Government, so under parliamentary rules has resigned his post with the antiques trade’s largest trade association.

ATG’s parent company, ATG Media, has agreed to provide the technology for the first live internet bidding site in Germany.