East Midlands

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE police are planning to return £24,000 worth of antiques at the Newark fair this Friday to dealers who accepted cheques from a fraudster.

Auctions to centre on Nottingham, Bristol and Newbury as others become offices

Trading standards officers say close to 100 unpaid consignors have been unable to contact Gadsbys Auctioneers and Valuers, of Tuxford Road, Leicester after the company abruptly stopped trading two months ago.

DMG make it a trade event as they revamp portfolio across the board

LAST month at Hemswell Antiques Centres in Gainsborough, north of Lincoln, whose website proclaims it to be the largest antiques centre in Europe with 300 dealers in three buildings and 1000 antiques available online, ten of the centres’ customers were offered the opportunity to learn about antique furniture from an experienced dealer.

THE TILES and Architectural Ceramics Society (TACS) is holding its annual antique tile fair at St Jude’s Church Hall, Mapperley, Nottingham on Saturday September 30.

IN Nottinghamshire from Saturday October 7 to Saturday October 14 , it’s one hectic week for antiques and collectors’ fairs. Buyers can spend the week rushing around nine venues on a mighty buying spree, including the Newark and Swinderby Fairs.

A vast photographic postcard archive depicting Devon in the first half of the 20th century has emerged in Nottinghamshire.

Before The Great War the Lincoln engineering company, William Foster and Co, was synonymous with the very best threshing machines. By 1918, managing director Sir William Tritton, together with Major W.G. Wilson, had been credited by the Royal Commission as the inventor of an armoured fighting vehicle forever known as the tank.

DMG Antique Fairs have called a stallholder summit to tackle the issue of early leaving at Newark following a mass exodus on the Saturday of the February fair.

It’s unlikely that Peter Stretch (c.1670-1746) of Leek would be remembered among the great clockmakers had he not chosen to board a ship bound for Philadelphia with his wife and family in 1702.

POLICE are appealing for information following the theft of four stuffed heads of wild animals that were stolen from a Leicestershire house.

Pictured right is a Yongzheng period (1723-1735) egg-yolk yellow ground ‘cranes’ bowl that was offered on the second day of a three-day sale conducted by Bamfords in Derby from September 13-15.

Charles Hanson, formerly of Wintertons, launches his own auction business next month.

Lincolnshire auctioneers Golding Young established a new house record on August 10 when they sold this superb mahogany breakfront side cabinet right for £135,000 (plus 15 per cent buyer’s premium).

Two very good stick barometers, in the popular 1820s form with bowfront and ebony-inlaid mahogany cases, were among the highlights at Grantham.

As celebrations abound for the most famous of all seamen, another great British admiral was being remembered in spectacular fashion at the Nottingham auction rooms of Mellors & Kirk on June 16. The subject of a fierce engagement between collectors was the so-called Rodney Jug.

In the centre of Lincoln stands the Westgate Water Tower, built between 1905 and 1911 to provide the city with clean drinking water, but also as a permanent reminder of the major typhoid epidemic that hit the city between November 1904 and April 1905.

Moorcroft miniatures are a collecting field in their own right. Anyone who owns a copy of Paul Atterbury’s book Moorcroft will be aware from the sleeve illustration just how many of the factory patterns were produced in miniature, often requiring an extra delicacy of touch on the part of the designer, potter and decorator.

OFTEN I have commented that the annual Buxton Antiques Fair, the 41st of which was held in the Pavilion Gardens of the Derbyshire spa town from May 11 to 15, keeps a low national profile.