London

PARTRIDGE of Bond Street have registered a 6.8 per cent rise in turnover for 2003, with a pre-tax profit of four per cent.

WITH thousands of middle-class homes being turned into white boxes every week, how on earth can English auctioneers sustain the market for middle-of-the-road Victorian pictures?

Bloomsbury Book Auctions are changing their name to Bloomsbury Auctions and moving to new premises at Bloomsbury House, a substantial refurbished building in Maddox Street, Mayfair.

The Spring Olympia fair, just concluded, will undergo a makeover next year that includes a new name.

BONHAMS Knightsbridge (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) Science and Marine outing on February 25 was hardly awash with blockbuster entries, but their disappointment at not selling John Gould’s cased display of humming birds (estimated to fetch £30,000-50,000 but bought in at £12,500 despite pre-sale collector interest) was somewhat allayed by the healthy bid placed for this Victorian octagonal double-cased shell Valentine (shown here).

This pair of early 19th century mahogany and brass-bound peat buckets soared to £68,000 plus 19.5% premium – six times their estimate – at Bonhams’ March 2 fine English and Continental furniture sale in Bond Street.

SOLD at Sotheby’s (20% buyer’s premium) for £10,500 on December 9 was a copy in modern limp vellum of the Epigrammata of Joan Latinus, a work that praises John of Austria for his recent victory over the Turks at Lepanto.

Furniture activity in London has been fairly low-key so far this year, but two mid-February furniture sales not only looked a step above the rest but were also fairly similar in their scope. Christie’s South Kensington’s (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) 502-lot sale on February 11 was one of their five annual sales of more select, varied and decorative content.

Bonhams are consolidating their reputation for high-profile and prestigious single-owner ceramics collections with another big name to add to the recent roll-call. After Bernard Watney, Norman Stretton, Billie Paine et al come Jeanne and Milton Zorensky, the first part of whose mammoth collection of First Period Worcester is to be offered for sale in Bonhams’ Bond Street rooms this month.

KENSINGTON ceramics dealer Garry Atkins holds his traditional annual exhibition of English pottery at his gallery at 107 Kensington Church Street, London W8 from March 9 to 20. There are 47 specially chosen items in the catalogue, which is free to those who attend the show or £8 by post.

WHAT a nice idea Mayfair dealers Windsor House Antiques have come up with for their March selling exhibition. In an area of London not renowned for its bargain prices, Windsor House, who have rather grand premises themselves, mount from March 3 to 14 a show entitled Antiques Under £5000.

ALTHOUGH it is now in its 11th year, the Spring Fine Art and Antiques Fair, which will be held at Olympia in West London from March 2 to 7, is the most recent of the three annual Olympias. To many eyes it is the most stylish and best looking of the three – to others it is the most problematical. It is certainly different.

In commercial terms ecclesiastical silver is not the strongest area of the market but there is no doubting its social and historical interest, especially when it has retained its links to the church for which it was made.

London’s Asian auction scene will not get into full swing until next month when the capital’s main rooms field sales of mixed Asian or Export wares before the action moves across the Atlantic for the New York fairs and sales.

SILVER SALES: Although different in size, the 451-lot silver sale at Bonhams’ Knightsbridge (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) sale on February 10 and the 263 lots offered at Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) on February 17 were both fairly routine affairs by London standards.

NINE prominent London specialist dealers have joined forces to launch London Sculpture Week this June. In recent years a number of such initiatives have been launched successfully to focus attention on an area of expertise in the capital. With increasing interest in sculpture it was thought it was time to highlight London’s considerable credentials in this field.

TRANSPORT for London have begun the first stage of a public consultation on the proposal to effectively double the area of coverage of the London congestion charging system. The proposal suggests extending the current zone westwards from Park Lane to include most of Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster where many of the city’s art and antique dealers are based.

PORTRAIT MINIATURES: At just under £92,000 for 287 lots, Bonhams Bond Street’s (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) first portrait miniature sale of the year on February 3 was essentially a middle-ranking offering.

What Bonhams are billing as “one of the world’s greatest portrait miniature collections” will go on sale in their Bond Street rooms on April 22. The 175 English and Continental miniatures, which have been on loan to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for the past three years, date from the 16th to the 19th century and are estimated to fetch in excess of £1m.

THIS year is the centenary of the foundation of the Georg Jensen silversmith workshop in Copenhagen, and to mark the anniversary the international Jensen specialists The Silver Fund hold an exhibition devoted to the work of one of the most renowned designers of the Jensen firm, Henning Koppel (1918-1981).