Organisations

MALCOLM HORD has announced that he is to retire as chief executive of LAPADA, the Association of Art and Antique Dealers, at the end of May next year.

A NEW survey has just been published showing how much better fine period furniture has proved as an investment compared to the stock market and property over the past 30 years.

Lovers of matters horticultural and supporters of the National Trust will be able to combine both interests this month. Sotheby’s September 25 sale of Garden Statuary and architectural items at Billingshurst includes a special 21-lot section titled The National Trust Gardens Year Auction comprising items donated to the Trust for sale as part of its Gardens Year celebrations with the aim of raising money for its Gardens Fund.

On September 11 Ebay suspended trading in all items relating to the World Trade Center or the Pentagon until October 1 as a mark of respect to victims and their families.

eBay has beaten predictions once again in its latest set of results, showing impressive growth in revenues as well as in the number of registered users.

UK: JONATHAN Horne, the well-known British ceramics dealer, pictured centre, has been elected the new chairman of the British Antique Dealers Association. He follows John Bly, pictured left. Also pictured is the Rt Hon Peter Brooke CH, who has been elected President of the BADA for the seventh year.

ANGELA Nevill has been elected chairman of the Society of London Art Dealers and Christopher Battiscombe will take over as general secretary at the beginning of September from Neil Smith, who retires at the end of July.

IT APPEARS that simple economics may be catching up with eBay sellers, at least in the antiques and collectibles sector. Everyone knows the law of supply and demand: if supply is low and demand high, prices go up. If supply is high and demand doesn’t increase accordingly, prices go down.

A pair of early Levi’s jeans dragged from the mud of a Nevada mining town were worth far more than their weight in gold when sold through eBay on May 25.

A number of dealers have contacted the Antiques Trade Gazette concerning a couple passing false cheques in antique shops across Dorset, Devon, Oxfordshire and Berkshire.

THE Society of Fine Art Auctioneers celebrated its silver jubilee at the Royal Thames Yacht Club in Knightsbridge last week, with chairman Chris Ewbank announcing a surge in membership.

SALES to overseas buyers now account for 63 per cent of business among members of the British Antique Dealers Association, according to BADA’s latest survey for 1999/2000.

BRITISH Art Market Federation chairman Anthony Browne has appealed to the Government to continue the fight to protect domestic trade interests from the worst aspects of droit de suite.

Internet auction giant EBay Inc. is to follow Yahoo in banning the sale of artefacts from Nazi Germany, in the hope of avoiding legal problems in other countries.

LAPADA, the Association of Art and Antique Dealers, have set out a three-point plan to help the trade meet the demands of the Kent Bill. They also plan to use the scheme to monitor possible legislation elsewhere across the country.

LAST year’s BADA Antiques and Fine Art Fair was by consensus considered not just the best looking of the association’s ventures so far but it was also, by quite a distance, the most profitable to date for the exhibitors.

THREE men have been charged with joining together to drive up prices for items they were selling on Internet auctions on EBay. The charges include one linked to a sale in which a Dutch user bid $135,000 for a fake Richard Diebenkorn painting.

ICOLLECTOR seem to be on a roll with their new eBay deal. After a good start, they have put in another creditable performance, this time at the recent Dargate Galleries sale of general antiques and collectables, reported in detail below.

US: JUST as it was with the Morris bird books featured in last week’s Antiquarian Books pages (see issue no. 1481), we are looking here at a very familiar set of books in an unfamiliar context.

UK: The National Arts Collection Fund has announced that it is to oversee the bequest of 250 works from the studio of the visionary painter Cecil Collins (1908-89) to about 50 galleries and museums across the country.