London

BUSINESS could not be better for Simon Spero, the Kensington Church Street, London W8 18th century porcelain specialist who opened his annual exhibition on Tuesday last week (October 5) at noon.

FOUNDED five years ago by Will Ramsay, the autumn version of The Affordable Art Fair runs from October 21 to 24 in a marquee in Battersea Park, London SW11. It is also held at the same venue in March.

CHRISTIE'S South Kensington are to launch a new sales programme next year that will turn them into a seven-days-a-week operation.

RIGHT: London auctioneers Spink’s pre-sale billing of this Anglo Saxon gold penny as ”the most important discovery in British numismatics for many years” gained tangible endorsement last week when they sold it for £200,000 – a new record for an English coin.

THE National Maritime Museum has purchased two prints from a London dealer following its appeal in the Antiques Trade Gazette for information about two missing William Hodges paintings.

THE sale of a Shakespeare First Folio is a rare event, but the sale of a copy that emerged out of nowhere is something that comes around only once in a generation.

THE chronicles of Captain Cook and his perils on the high seas of the South Pacific, possess a mixture of action, adventure, discovery, science and romance that is enough to capture the most hardened imagination.

EXCAVATION work due to start shortly on archaeological remains, as part of the Bermondsey redevelopment project, will not interfere with the New Caledonian Antiques Market.

“EVERY auction house’s dream” is how Rupert Powell, managing director of Bloomsbury Auctions, described the discovery of a Shakespeare First Folio that will provide a fitting centrepiece for the company’s 500th sale on Thursday October 7.

WITHERS and Devonshires Solicitors, law firms who specialise in art market issues, are sponsoring two seminars: one on art loans and the risks involved, the other on art and the police.

NOW an autumn institution in Kensington, two of the London borough’s top ceramics specialists hold their concurrent annual selling exhibitions from October 5 to 16. Both have something to celebrate.

SOTHEBY'S (20/12% buyer’s premium) September 14 sale offered a selection of watches and wristwatches in their Bond Street sale that realised a total of £424,500 with selling rates of 67 per cent by lot and value.

SOLD for £2200 (C.R. Johnson) at Bloomsbury Auctions on August 19 was a Batchelor’s Directory.., a work. of 1694, which goes on to describe itself as ...a treatise on the excellence of marriage; of its necessity, and the means to live happy in it: together with an apology for the women against the calumnies of the men. Bound in contemporary red morocco gilt, this first edition was catalogued as “a dedication copy from the author”, but to whom, we are not told.

BONHAMS have named two of their most senior specialists as joint deputy chairmen of the company.

AFTER 93 years trading in the West End, celebrated English furniture dealers Stair & Company Ltd closed their doors last month.

“IN my 30 years in the business I’ve not seen anything like this before,” said Neil Freeman, of Angling Auctions. “I’ve checked everywhere, but I can’t find anything like it.”

MOVING from its usual September slot, the autumn Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair – the last of the three annual stagings – will be in its trademark marquee in Battersea Park, London SW11 from October 5 to 10.

IT was a third edition of 1799, slightly foxed and browned and lacking the half titles, but the copy of George Walker’s novel The Vagabond seen in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of August 19 was in a contemporary calf gilt binding and it sold at £400 (C.R. Johnson).

IT’S been billed as the most important discovery in British numismatics for many years. Now the London auction house Spink are to offer the first newly-discovered Anglo-Saxon gold penny to come to light for almost a century.

CLARION Events, who run the Summer Olympia Fine Art and Antiques Fair, are to cut the number of stands at next year’s staging.