Front Page and News

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’.

Christie’s executive Dirk Boll told delegates at the Art Business Conference that the decorative arts could be coming back into fashion.

The art and antiques trade were warned to be ready for the new money-laundering regulation coming into force next year.

The UK government will ensure that ivory regulations are balanced and with “appropriate exemptions”, the new minister for arts, heritage and tourism told the Art Business Conference last week.

Sotheby’s is to test the temperature of the market for Japanese art with its first dedicated sale in London for more than a decade.

An art dealership that sold a portrait of Napoleon’s brother-in-law to The Frick Collection in New York has strongly criticised Italy’s decision to retrospectively rescind its export licence.

Derbyshire’s Hansons Auctioneers is opening a second London location.

London coin dealership Sovereign Rarities will conduct its first auction on September 25.

BADA and LAPADA have alerted their members that any business with an annual taxable turnover more than the VAT registration threshold (currently £85,000) should keep digital records.

Mullany Haute Epoque Fine Art opens the doors to its new gallery on Bury Street, St James’s, this autumn, taking the premises formerly occupied by a silver dealership.

Gardiner Houlgate in Wiltshire is dubbing its upcoming sale “the UK’s largest-ever auction of guitars”.

Trade bodies are urging the art and antiques sector not to panic following the announcement that the government is preparing for a ‘no-deal Brexit’.

Ivory elements of an important piece of Chippendale furniture were removed prior to its appearance at auction earlier this year, ATG has learned.