London

FAMOUS West End department store Heal’s is the sponsor of the V&A’s major spring exhibition, International Arts and Crafts, which will be held at the museum in South Kensington from March 17 to 24.

NEWS too, of confident moves in the fine art trade. After a career in the London art world spanning some 45 years, Martin Summers has, just after his 66th birthday, set up his own gallery and dealership, Martin Summers Fine Art Ltd, at 54 Glebe Place in Chelsea.

The market for Clarice Cliff may not be the spirited beast it was five or six years ago when Christie’s South Kensington’s specialist sales could routinely expect to boast 80-90 per cent selling rates by lot.

IN February 1885, a 21ft long illuminated manuscript dating back to the 1320s was exhibited to the Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries in London.It was described as “a very curious Genealogical Roll of the Kings of England” whose “chief point of interest is the artistic excellence of the figures”.

Police have issued this CCTV image of a man wanted for questioning in connection with a theft at a Greenwich antiques shop.

The venerable Mayfair dealership The Fine Art Society, whose Bond Street premises are currently undergoing stage two of a refurbishment, has announced two youthful appointments to its board of directors.

WITH MacArthurmania gripping a nation already gearing itself up for the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar, this should, in theory, be an auspicious year for the UK marine pictures market.

Almost a quarter of a century after it was stolen from its walls, the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery is again appealing for the return of a Japanese woodblock print that once belonged to Vincent van Gogh.

DISTINGUISHED Kensington early English pottery specialist Jonathan Horne, whose stock is as popular with his many American collectors as on the home market, returns from the New York Ceramics Fair to his shop at 66c Kensington Church Street, London W8 from February 22 to March 5 for his 25th annual exhibition.

Buoyed by rising stockmarkets and the continuing strength of the euro against the pound, European private collectors were buying in force at Sotheby’s and Christie’s February round of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art sales in London.

NO more the enfant terrible of the Brit-Art world, shark man Damien Hirst is quite at home in salubrious Knightsbridge, especially after he walked away with £11m from his famous Pharmacy sale at Sotheby’s.

A CONFERENCE addressing the special problems facing the art and antiques trade will be held at the Earls Court Conference Centre in London on Monday, May 16.

At Sandown Park Antiques Fair on February 15, Paul Braithwaite on stand HW5 is offering this early 20th century surgeons’ fitted box, made by Mayer & Meltzer, surgical instrument makers in London, for £385.

The final Dix Noonan Webb (15% buyer’s premium) 2004 sale in London, on December 14, was a massive 1610-lot affair with a diversity of offerings. The total hammer take was £282,905.

Christie's King Street, 20 January, Buyer's Premium: 20/12%.The most expensive piece from the 26 lots offered from Endsleigh, the Devon cottage designed for the 6th Duke of Bedford was this 6ft (1.8m) wide carved oak side table designed c.1801-14 by Jeffry Wyatt, the architect responsible for the main decorative scheme at Endsleigh, and made by local cabinetmaker John Williams of Exeter.

Business as usual was the message from Camden Stables following the sale of the north London market to the clothing tycoon Richard Caring. A price of £40m was quoted in the financial press.

AFTER more than 41 years, veteran silver dealers Hymie and Shirley Dinerstein have left West London’s Portobello Road.

FOR its seventh London staging, The Watercolours and Drawings Fair leaves its long-time home at the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly, and moves deeper into Mayfair to The Royal Academy, 6 Burlington Gardens, W1 where it will run from February 3 to 6 with a charity preview on the evening of February 2.

AFTER a decade at the venue, Essex-based organiser Robert Bailey has decided not to stage his flagship fair at Claridge’s hotel in London this April.

Star billing at Christie’s King Street sale of selected English and Continental ceramics on December 6 went to three Meissen Augustus Rex covered baluster jars of 1740 with the AR monogram and Dreher’s marks XII to the base.