Front Page and News

Richard Madley, a former director of Dreweatts, has been appointed UK agent for Sydney firm Shapiro Auctioneers, to source objects with an Australian background or provenance to be sold Down Under.

Despite visible condition issues, a pair of carved giltwood console tables, catalogued as c.1740 and later, sailed past modest expectations to bring £65,000 (plus 24% premium) at Dreweatts 1759 of Donnington Priory.

Early maps and charts, previously owned by a Brazilian banker convicted of money laundering, surfaced for sale at Chiswick Auctions last week.

An oil on copper painting depicting Saint Joseph by the Bolognese artist Gaetano Gandolfi (1734-1802) was the highlight of Brightwells’ spring fine art sale in Leominster on March 21-22.

The Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) is expected to publish a response to the ivory ban consultation this month.

A rediscovered neoclassical painting by Charles Meynier somersaulted nine times over its estimate to sell for €1.8m (£1.57m) at a sale in Nantes.

When the first wave of Kenner Star Wars action figures began arriving on the market in 1978, the Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker figures came with ‘double telescoping’ light sabres.

The BBC has put the production of antiques game show Bargain Hunt out to tender for a two-year contract, despite speculation that the long-running programme, now in its 50th series, would be axed in a drive to boost the quality of daytime TV output.

The UK's National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has funding in place for vernacular portraits ‘owned by ordinary people’. It is calling on the trade to help it acquire works for a new exhibition centred on identity before the era of painted portraiture.

An exceptionally rare Western Zhou bronze, taken when the Summer Palace was sacked by British troops in 1860, has been discovered in a house in a Kent seaside town.

Lyon & Turnbull has appointed Philip Smith, former head of modern & post-war art and design at Mallams, to the newly created role of associate director for modern art and design.

A private museum in south-west Germany has bought a portrait by Swiss artist Jean- Etienne Liotard (1702-89) from London Old Master dealer Derek Johns.

More than $120m of Asian art was sold at auction during last week’s New York Asia Week.

The art and antiques trade is facing further money laundering regulation from the European Union.

An American private collector bid £15,000 for a rare Clarice Cliff figure group at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury.

A cluster of new fairs is planned in Europe this year.

Online channels are an increasing source of new buyers for both auction houses and dealers, despite the art and antiques sector being behind the wider economy when it comes to use of ecommerce, a new global report says.

Among the first sales of BADA 2018 was this modernist Archibald Knox silver and pink enamel inkwell sold from the stand of The Peartree Collection for more than £10,000.

Two businessmen from Auckland have rescued New Zealand auction house Webb’s from administration after the collapse of parent company Mossgreen.

An investigation in Germany into an Israeli art dealer, charged with being the ringleader of an international fraud ring, has concluded after the two central allegations against him were dropped.