Letters to the Editor

MADAM – We regularly read in ATG of ‘good luck’ stories of people finding wonderful things for nothing in car boot sales or charity shops. They are not really good luck stories at all but, rather, bad luck stories.

MADAM – What wasn’t mentioned in your review of Artist’s Resale Right (ARR) in ATG No 2404 is that the ‘first sale’ exemption also applies to auction houses, so any lots from a studio sale which make over €1000 are exempt from ARR.

MADAM – With regard to the article ‘Thar she Blows...’ (Books and works on paper, ATG No 2404), Melville was only one of many authors who suffered from the puritanical attitude of US publishers.

MADAM – A silver seal matrix, probably George III period, has recently been added to the Matrix Collection.

MADAM – The new ATG recyclable wrapper is an excellent initiative (Letters, ATG No 2404).

MADAM – I was interested to see in Auction Reports, ATG No 2403, an early photograph of the band Fleetwood Mac. But I was even more interested when on closer inspection I noticed that Peter Green, the ‘star’ of the band, wasn’t in the picture at all, even though your story mentioned that he was.

MADAM – Re: Michael Laikan’s letter in this week’s ATG (No 2404). The brass instrument illustrated is a tobacco shredder.

MADAM – Now the journalistic ‘silly season’ is with us and you have recently curtailed discussion about ‘ordinaries’ and ‘longcases’ (I thought this could tick on for longer, having my own now unpublished theories) may I introduce other subjects to fill the void.

MADAM – I would be grateful if any of your experts or readers could help me with identifying an instrument (pictured below) brought to me by one of my customers.

MADAM – The BBC’s 'Fake or Fortune?' returned to TV screens last month with a Thomas Gainsborough mystery. I watched with great interest, and a degree of trepidation.

MADAM – I’m sure I’m not the first to write about this but could the inscription on the mount of the picture attributed to Glyn Philpot (Art Market, ATG No 2399) have read or was meant to be C Phillott?

MADAM – I have just read the article on the painting by Richard Lin sold recently in the McCartneys Ludlow auction for £84,000 (Art Market, ATG No 2401).

MADAM – I am delighted to be able to reassure your reader Geoffrey Hobson (Letters, ATG No 2398) that indeed the facilities he discovered in a US auction house are already in use in our auction room and others in the UK (Ewbank’s, Forum and Stanley Gibbons to name a few).

This month art adviser and former co-chairman of Sotheby’s Europe Henry Wyndham is walking 185 miles along the 8th century wonder that is Offa’s Dyke to raise money for The Royal Marsden, a world-leading cancer centre.

MADAM – We have several paintings in our store room left by artists or owners who have failed to collect them.

MADAM – Having made a few appearances in ATG recently, a small silver pepper pot in the form of a Suffragette was eventually auctioned in London at an extraordinary hammer price of £3200 against an estimate of £800-900 [see picture below].

MADAM – The niello designs on the ‘Persian’ Esther scroll sold at Lyon & Turnbull (ATG No 2398) indicate that in my opinion this is likely to be Iraqi work rather than Persian.

MADAM – I’m amazed how many people don’t know the difference between prints such as lithograph, linocut, etching, wood engraving and woodcut.

MADAM – In last week’s edition (‘Trading Places’ ATG No 2397), you include a short piece about the London Silver Vaults. It is only a small point, but the article states that the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit opened in 1876.

MADAM – I was interested to receive the statement from Patrick Drahi on the acquisition of Sotheby’s.