Organisations

Baroness Rawlings of Burnham Westgate has accepted the invitation of the British Antique Dealers’ Association to become their new president. She will replace Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville who has filled the role since 1995.

LAPADA are to target young dealers in a membership drive after their latest survey shows hardly any existing members are aged under 35.

EBAY appear to have dropped their ban on the sale of works by Italian designer Fulvio Bianconi.

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.

THE ATG online price guide has notched up more than 500,000 individual prices for items sold at auction.

A POSSIBLE hike in import VAT linked to works of art sold in the UK is not the threat some fear, says British Art Market Federation chairman Anthony Browne.

PRESENTER and interviewer Jeremy Paxman, pictured right, has agreed to be the patron of this year’s Antiquarian Book Fair, which will be held at Olympia in West London from June 9 to 12.

Responding to requests from auctioneers and site users, the pop-up images on antiquestradegazette.com are now bigger.

No great improvement in trading conditions was reported by the majority of dealers who completed the most recent BADA survey.

EBAY’s fourth quarter and year-end results for 2004 were up again – but not as much as expected, leading to a dip in the share price.

Edinburgh dealer John Dixon of Georgian Antiques has joined the LAPADA board of directors.

STUDENTS at Southampton Institute will benefit from a five-year bursary programme set up by the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers and funded by former SOFAA chairman Christopher Weston.

THE Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association has hit back at criticism levelled at the trade in a court case involving a serial thief of valuable maps.

A LEADING figure in the world of heritage is calling for a change in the export licence rules – after the decision to keep a valuable work of art in the UK.

Hosted by ATG at the City Flogger in the City of London, the event brought together 20 teams from all areas of the art and antiques world for a light-hearted charity event which nevertheless caused some serious head-scratching.

Arts Council England have launched Own Art, a new national interest-free loan scheme to encourage people to buy art.

EBAY users are being warned to look out for the Second Chance Offer scam that is among the latest frauds to hit the online marketplace. In this ruse, scammers impersonating eBay sellers target disappointed underbidders of high-price lots claiming to offer them the ‘second chance’ to buy the lot.

CHRISTIE'S have announced that discussions with the National Trust for Scotland concerning a private sale of Dumfries House and its contents have ended.

SOUTHAMPTON Institute has two reasons to celebrate this week: its newly adopted status as a university college, granted on November 1, and the awarding of a number of prizes to its fine arts valuation students.

WEST Midlands Police have arrested three people from Birmingham in connection with the theft of Staffordshire figures from the Antiques for Everyone fair after the items were spotted on eBay.