London

OLYMPIA’s Winter Fine Art & Antiques Fair, which closed on November 18 is the premier pre-Christmas fixture in London. This 15th annual staging proved no exception and, as usual, it got off to a strong start.

Anyone who picked up Sotheby’s latest Chinese catalogue for their November 7 sale in London could not have failed to notice the stunning blue and white Qianlong moonflask on the catalogue cover, the piece that topped the sale when it sold for £2.5m.

There were winners all round as Asian Art In London celebrated its tenth anniversary with a gala party in the Hotung Gallery of the British Museum last Tuesday.

A FUNDING crisis means the Percival David Foundation collection of Chinese ceramics will move from the University of London’s School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) to the British Museum.

THE Gilbert Collection is to move from Somerset House on London’s Embankment to the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington next year.

Fellows & Sons, the Birmingham-based auctioneers and valuers, are to expand their operation to London and have appointed Richard Slater to spearhead the initiative.

Not all the major single-owner collections are sold at auction. Last week Partridge Fine Art announced exclusively to ATG that they have secured the $40m (£20m) collection of Texas media and communications entrepreneur Scott Ginsburg for sale in their New Bond Street galleries.

As collectors parted with hundreds of thousands of pounds for works at Frieze, fair organiser Jasper Joffe was busy at another event giving art away free.

SPINK have set a new record for an English silver coin with the £180,000 they took for a 1663 Charles II silver Crown on September 27.

Council puts up new barriers to fend off invasion of clone stores and retail giants

BONHAMS will auction off the contents of the Savoy Hotel on the premises in London in a three-day sale just days after it closes for a £100 million refurbishment.

Asian Art in London celebrates its tenth anniversary from November 1 to 10 and as part of the anniversary celebrations will join with the British Museum to hold a Study Day around the exhibition The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army on November 10. Tickets for the day cost £22 (contact 0207 323 8181).

Dealers make up fair’s management board

The Goldsmiths’ Company has announced a proposal to establish a major new centre for jewellery and silversmithing in the heart of Clerkenwell.

LONDON art dealer Peter Nahum is offering for sale his St James’s business. The Leicester Galleries Ltd, originally founded in 1902 and now with an international reputation for 19th and 20th century British and Eurpean art.

When Wales’ most popular 20th century artist Sir Kyffin Williams passed away last year he bequeathed the furniture from his Anglesey home to the University College of North Wales. Numerous pieces that the University did not require turned up in The Wales and West Country Sale at Bonhams Bath on June 25.

Some of the heat may have left the Jack Vettriano (b.1951) market since his Singing Butler made £660,000 in April 2004, but Sotheby’s nevertheless posted the second highest price ever paid for the artist at auction when they sold Bluebird at Bonneville for £400,000 (plus premium) – the top lot of the firm’s annual sale at the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire on the evening of August 29.

ELTHAM Palace in Greenwich is fully booked on Sunday, September 9 for its regular biannual Art Deco Fair with 15 specialist Deco dealers, including the Design Gallery of Westerham.

A substantial reward is being offered for the return of a George III ormolu and white marble table clock by Matthew Boulton stolen from Knightsbridge dealership Hotspur on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 22.

The Frieze art fair (October 11-14) at Regents Park has already spawned two ‘tailgate’ events in the form of Scope and Zoo, but this year’s new addition is a little different.