Around the Auction Houses

Not only is industrious Derbyshire auction house Hansons about to launch its new saleroom down south, but it is also starting a new sale format building on the popular tribal art collecting scene.

Auctioneering is a fiercely competitive business, on the face of it. Behind the scenes, however, there are many examples of salerooms helping each other – from sharing business experiences to providing specialist counsel on objects.

New year brings a new sales calendar at Halls of Shrewsbury, not least launching a dedicated Asian art auction.

Lucie Rowe, who started her career with Cirencester auction house Moore Allen & Innocent 15 years ago as a part-time saleday porter, has been promoted to her first management position: assistant saleroom manager.

Not many new faces at salerooms can include among their experience “a trained horse whisperer”.

In business for 20-plus years, former Sotheby’s auctioneer Catherine Southon, founder of the eponymous auction house and antiques TV presenter, takes nothing for granted.

It’s a new name and a new start for a Jedburgh saleroom this autumn.

Huge new auction centre ready to launch on the edge of Bedford includes five salerooms...

Keys is holding two specialist sales next year to whet the appetite. Not only does the Norfolk auction house have a shipshape selection dedicated to ‘local hero’ Nelson, but it has also secured the diploma collection of the Royal Society of Marine Artists (RSMA), Tom Derbyshire writes.

Thomson Roddick has been running auctions across Scotland for more than 130 years but is now planning to expand its operations in the Borders.

Security shouldn’t be too much of a problem when opening a gallery space if one of your new neighbours is a former prime minister protected by armed guards. But aside from Tony Blair’s London residence down the road, Lyon & Turnbull had plenty of its own reasons for choosing Connaught Street, just north of Hyde Park, as the location for its new showroom.

Dawson’s Auctioneers is a relatively fresh-faced newcomer to the auction house scene but is keen to open new chapters of business as soon as possible.

Some auctioneers believe they are rock stars when they take to the rostrum. But the owner of a new auction business in the north-west has been closer to real-life rock stars than most gavel-masters.

Temperatures are usually high in London when the Society of Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers (SOFAA) hosts its biennial dinner and this year was no exception. The heat outside didn’t dissuade attendees from donning black tie and high heels to the event at the Royal Thames Yacht Club in Knightsbridge on June 30.

News in brief from around the auction houses...

It wasn’t so much a Road to Damascus moment for Edward Crichton but more the road back to Bury St Edmunds, a car journey that provided the Lacy Scott & Knight auctioneer with much-needed think time.

Networking is far more than a good chinwag. As Baldwin’s of St James’s medal specialist Mark Smith explains, it can also be good business.

Just over a year since its launch, Stamford Auction Rooms is staging its first estate sale on May 27.

Pinball machines, Francis Bacon paintbrushes and bear skeletons: is Essex ready for an Out of the Ordinary sale? Sworders managing director Guy Schooling believes so. He has just hired former Bonhams and Christie’s specialist Mark Wilkinson to launch a series of specialist sales at the Stansted Mountfitchet auction house.

Lawrences of Crewkerne is co-sponsoring a major new exhibition of works by the Camden Town Group which runs at the Museum of Somerset in Taunton until July 8.