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FLORIDA-based art fair entrepreneur David Lester is proposing a radical new relationship between exhibitor and fair organiser in response to the global economic turmoil.

LORD Ashcroft’s Victoria Cross collection – the largest in the world – is to go on public display following his £5m donation to the Imperial War Museum. The news comes as the museum has also received a donation from the Art Fund to purchase an important watercolur by Keith Vaughan (1912-1977) at auction.

A DEAL is being finalised which means Palm Beach | America's International Fine Art & Antique Fair, is owned once again by Florida-based entrepreneur David Lester, who founded the event.

Lord Ashcroft has been at the centre of a successful bid to recover 96 medals, including nine Victoria Crosses, stolen from a museum in New Zealand in December.

Spink are to put the unrivalled Victoria Cross collection of Lord Ashcroft on display in an 11-day exhibition in their main gallery in April. The exhibition is a forerunner to what is expected to become a permanent public display in two years’ time.

ALMOST five years after the idea was first conceived by Florida entrepreneur David Lester, his luxury floating exhibition palace SeaFair is preparing for its maiden voyage in the summer.

SEAFAIR, the ambitious project of a floating antiques selling exhibition along the Eastern seaboard of the United States, has delayed its launch from late this year to next June.

HENRY Sandon, the acknowledged leading authority on Worcester porcelain, has been awarded the Freedom of the City of London. The ceremony took place at the Guildhall on February 28, where Mr Sandon then gave the annual Ravenscroft lecture at Glaziers Hall SE1, an event staged by the Glass-Sellers’ Company.

ALONGSIDE, Tom Jones, Bruce Forsyth and the Ashes winning cricket team, the New Year’s honours list featured Richard Dennis.

Plans to rejuvenate firm include big stand at Olympia

Charles Hanson, formerly of Wintertons, launches his own auction business next month.

The recent arrest of Sheikh Saud Al-Thani of Qatar appears to mark the end of a remarkable one-man, eight-year spending spree in the global art market.

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.

LAPADA will return to The Centaur at Cheltenham Racecourse for their 2005 Autumn Antiques and Fine Art Fair following last month’s inaugural event there. It will again be organised by Ingrid Nilson.

SIR Nicholas Goodison is the winner of the first CINOA Prize, a new award devised by the international confederation of associations of art and antiques dealers.

NICK Bonham has quit the board of Bonhams after working for the firm for 38 years.

TIMES may be tough at fairs, but that does not stop organisers launching new ones, nor dealers giving them a go.

PABLO Picasso’s Garçon à la pipe boosted Sotheby’s second quarter sales considerably, alone accounting for about 9.5 per cent of the total.

WEST Country-based organiser Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs is having a busy summer, even if her last couple of fairs, the first Oxford County Antiques Fair and the established North Cotswolds Antiques and Decorative Fair, were quieter than she would have liked.

FOLLOWING the supremely successful launch of her West Country Antiques Fair at Powderham Castle, near Exeter, earlier this year, Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs might have been tempting fate with another launch so soon after. Certainly her first Oxford County Antiques Fair, at beautiful Eynsham Hall, near Woodstock from May 7 to 9, was not an event to remember.