People

DESPITE the myriad complaints that there are too many fairs, still they keep coming, and here is another. From May 7 to 9 Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs launches her Oxford County Antiques Fair at Eynsham Hall, an 18th century Grade 11 listed manor house in 30 acres of parkland near Woodstock.

FLUSHED with the successful launch in early February of her West Country Antiques Fair at Powderham Castle, near Exeter, Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs moves north this weekend to her established Cheshire County Antiques Fair, which will be held at Arley Hall, near Knutsford from March 12 to 14.

LAPADA have named their new chief executive as Sarah Harvey, a former auctioneer at both Phillips and Sotheby’s. She will take up her post on March 29.

Choosing to concentrate upon their auction business, Sotheby’s Holdings, Inc., have sold their real estate brokerage operations to Cendant Corporation. The total cash purchase price for the luxury brand and a 100-year licensing agreement was approximately $100m, plus ongoing fees based on future royalties from the development of a franchise business planned under the Sotheby's International Realty name.

Local trade fare particularly well at Powderham: TWO weeks ago, when Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs promised her new West Country Antiques Fair at Powderham Castle, near Exeter, would be “an antiques event of a quality not seen before in the West Country”, I must admit I thought that a very bold claim indeed.

ORGANISER Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs is promising “an antiques event of a quality not seen before in the West Country” with this weekend’s launch of her West Country Antiques Fair at Powderham Castle, near Exeter. It seems a bold claim but, on reflection, there have not been that many successful quality fairs in the West Country so Mrs Ede may well be on safe ground.

Luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault finally abandoned his attempt to compete with Christie’s and Sotheby’s at the top end of the art market last week when he sold his remaining 27.5 per cent stake in troubled auction house Phillips to its joint chief executives Simon de Pury and Daniella Luxembourg.

MEDIA star and Deco expert Eric Knowles officially cut the ribbon when popular Oxfordshire antiques centre The Swan at Tetsworth unveiled its new Art Deco Showroom on January 13.

UNCERTAINTY over the future of Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg continued this week, with chairman Simon de Pury confirming only that he was conducting negotiations with stakeholder LVMH.

This icon of 20th century modernist design – Marianne Brandt’s celebrated tea infuser of 1927 was one of the highlights of Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg’s (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) 117-lot sale of 19th and 20th century design on December 11.

FLORIDA hosts a new design fair next year when ARTform, the International Fair for Dimensional Fine Art, debuts at the International Pavilion of the Palm Beaches in downtown West Palm Beach from March 6 to 11.

SOME regular exhibitors have been standing at Cooper Antiques Fairs' premier autumn event, the Cheshire County Antiques Fair, for 14 years and not many have been doing it for less than five.

AFTER spending much of the summer in London trying to woo British dealers over to his Fall Fair in New York, it was back in America that more recently organiser David Lester achieved his biggest coup so far in launching this new event.

SOTHEBY’S chief executive Bill Ruprecht is bullish about the company’s second quarter performance, reporting a 25 per cent increase in net income on the same period last year.

THEY had to meet sometime and it was a colourful clash when the two TV stars, interior designer Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen and dealer/presenter David Dickinson, chanced upon each other at the Ardingly International Antiques and Collectors Fair at the South of England Showground on July 16 and 17.

A US federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of former Sotheby’s chairman A. Alfred Taubman who had been found guilty of conspiring with rival auctioneer Christie’s International to fix commission fees.

ALFRED Taubman, who has just announced an appeal against his collusion conviction, has started the ball rolling in his bid to sell his controlling stake in Sotheby’s.

In a second attempt to have his price-fixing conviction overturned, former Sotheby’s auction house chairman A. Alfred Taubman has asked an appeals court to reconsider his case, citing errors by the trial judge. “This was not a fair fight,” lawyers for the Bloomfield Hills multimillionaire said when filing the 95-page appeal document on May 21.

GOOD news for all those British dealers who are anxious to attend a fair in New York sooner rather than later. Back in February, David Lester, head of International Fine Art Expositions, organisers of the acclaimed Palm Beach fair, announced he was planning an autumn fair at Manhattan’s Jacob Javits Convention Center.

The former chairmen of Sotheby’s and Christie’s faced different but equally humiliating fates last week following the auction house price-fixing scandal.