London

Staff briefed on avoiding conflicts of interest. Sotheby's have sent out a memo to leading members of the trade involved with fairs at Olympia to explain how they will support exhibitors.

Next month will see a crop of Oriental auctions as part of Asian Art in London, the capital’s celebration of the rich vein of commercial and non commercial treasures and expertise on offer in its galleries, salerooms and museums. For those hungry for goods in the meantime, Bonhams & Brooks (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) opted to go ahead of the general run and offer a large 420-lot oriental gathering on September 26.

It’s a case of two days only with Ryan Fine Art’s (74 Vanbrugh Park, Blackheath, SE3 7JQ. Tel: 020 8293 5300) exhibition of over 80 Victorian and European oils, watercolours and prints.

“For the really top things there’s no shortage of buyers, but the middle ground is weaker,” affirmed Stephen Mould of Sotheby’s wine department. “If you’ve got large parcels that depend on the trade, then bidders are more cautious. But if you’ve got small quantities of the finest things there are plenty of private buyers prepared to pay good money.”

Jean-Vital Remy was one of the most determined and assiduous Dinky toy collectors. Over a relatively short space of time – around 15 years from the mid-1980s – this Belgian enthusiast built up an enormous assemblage of French and English Dinkys spanning the entire production period. His desire for comprehensiveness and determination to acquire pieces with unusual colour or design variations made him a formidable adversary when it came to buying, whether at auctions or in shops or fairs.

HOPES of finalising a draft of proposals for developing the new Home Office database for beating art crime by the beginning of October have not been realised. It now appears that it will be at least another two months before the proposals can be submitted to the parliamentary committee looking into them for assessment.

Leonard Rosoman (b.1913) is an artist whose technical skill and individuality of style has never quite captured the imagination of the art market in the way that more widely recognised contemporaries like Edward Burra have.

The September 20 auction of Doulton, Poole and Carlton ware at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) was a three-part sale that gave two distinctly different performances.

An evening sale of contemporary ceramics, held by Phillips (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on September 25 yielded a healthy set of overall statistics and some strong individual results. Just over three-quarters of the 200-odd lots changed hands (82 per cent in value terms) chalking up a net total of just under £390,000.

From the day it was delivered to Lord Yarborough in 1826, this Benjamin Vulliamy travelling clock had remained in the same family until it was sold at Hy Duke’s sale in Dorchester on September 20.

AFTER this year the 20/21 British Art Fair will move from the Royal College of Art in Kensington Gore, London SW7 to the Commonealth Institute, Kensington High Street, W8.

Porcelain toys are the tiny versions of tablewares produced by ceramic factories alongside their standard size wares. The earliest 18th century examples, often less than an inch in height, were probably made to furnish dolls’ or baby houses, which were initially playthings for adults rather than children.

Themed series are all the rage in the salerooms these days. September 25-28 has been designated Travel Week by Christie’s King Street rooms and will be given over to a series of sales devoted to voyages, exploration and discovery.

JUST opened in an unprepossessing 1970s gasworks laboratory on the Fulham/Chelsea divide is Core One, a collective of five very unconventional antique dealers who specialise in items old and new for the decorator.

UK: LONDON’s art world was reeling last week with the shock announcement from Anthony d’Offay, one of the country’s leading and most influential contemporary art dealers, that he was to retire and close his West End galleries at the end of the year.

UK: The trade are being warned to be on their guard following the theft of a Louis XV rococo clock worth in the region of £10,000 from Mayfair dealers Howard Antiques. At approximately 4pm on Tuesday, August 21, a man aged between 40 and 45 and of Eurasian appearance entered the Davies Street shop.

SOTHEBY’S launch their new saleroom at Olympia in West London on September 18 with the auction of the Ian Grant Collection, removed from 41 Ladbroke Square.

August may be an unlikely month to find unusual Asian entries in London’s salerooms, but Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) regular Asian Decorative Arts sale, August 16, threw up two quirky 19th century Chinese blue and white bottle vases and covers, 121/4in (31cm) high, made for the Tibetan market.

This pair of Chinese porcelain vases had been salvaged from a house owned by a religious cult. No, not the Falun Gong, but the Panacea Society, a ‘charity’ founded in Bedford after the First World War who believed that Christ would make his second coming to the town of the eponymous van.

A continued demand for good quality Georgian and early Victorian jewellery at Phillips (15/10% buyer’s premium), Bayswater, 415-lot antique and modern jewellery auction, August 7, saw this gem set heart-shaped locket pendant, c.1830, steal the top slot.