Front Page and News

Two leading regional auction houses – Lyon & Turnbull and Dreweatts – are trying new format sales this autumn in the hope of increasing demand for traditional European art and antiques. Both are creating room sets for viewing works.

Three proposals for a European Union law on the import of cultural goods have been tabled for ‘trilogue’ talks in November.

Heritage Auctions in Texas sold this Broadwood amboyna and giltwood grand piano for $22,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) at a recent auction. Evidently it had been on quite a journey.

One of the earliest surviving incandescent light bulbs, made by the English physicist Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914) in the 1870s, sold for £7500 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) at Bonhams’ sale titled Instruments of Science and Technology.

The art and antiques trade celebrated a victory in the US after the Trump administration dropped plans for an import tax of 25% on art and antiques of Chinese origin.

Two early examples of Indo- Portuguese furniture sold for five-figure sums at auction this month.

The relaunched British Art Fair opened with a flurry of sales at its new London venue, the Saatchi Gallery.

Chiswick Auctions’ hiring spree has continued with 12 new starters joining this summer, taking the firm to a headcount of 80.

Ahead of a threatened import tax, overseas consignments of Chinese art were among the best sellers in the September Asian art sales in New York.

No amendments were accepted on behalf of the trade during the latest House of Lords debate on the bill.

Tributes have been paid to Islamic art’s ‘most influential’ dealer Oliver Hoare who has died aged 73 after a battle with cancer.

More than 500 lots of pictures, sculpture, furniture, textiles, architectural features and artefacts spanning 2000 years from the collection of the late Robert Barley, will come to auction at TW Gaze later this month.

One of the earliest pieces of ancient art in the US, an ancient Assyrian relief that arrived in Virginia before the American Civil War, is being offered at auction.

A pair of early 17th century gloves slipped into a top spot at the LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair last week.

A book of specimen banknotes printed for locations across the world has set a house record for Tring Market Auctions (17.5% buyer’s premium) by selling for £205,000.

Bonhams’ chairman Robert Brooks is retiring from the auction house after selling the company to private equity group Epiris.

West Sussex auction house Bellmans has reshuffled its top team following the departure of managing director Jonathan Pratt, who left to join Dreweatts last month.

Considering that W Britain began making his revolutionary hollowcast toy soldiers only in 1893, a set dating from just three years later certainly deserves the tag ‘early’.