London

AT a time when much talk has been about the contraction of the antiques industry, John Lewis, one of Oxford Street, London’s top department stores, have just opened a dedicated antiques department in the main room on their third floor. The John Lewis Partnership operate 26 department stores across the UK and this is their third antiques operation.

YOU might well detect a distinct whiff of testosterone in the air around Mayfair’s Bruton Street later this month when a selling exhibition Gentleman’s Relish: 200 Years of Machismo runs at the Shapero Gallery at No. 24 from September 24 to October 17.

ALL 43 exhibitors at Caroline Penman’s Petersfield Antiques Fair enjoyed some business at the Festival Hall from September 5 to 7 with a majority reporting good sales.

Fred T. Jane is a turn-of-the-century artist who doesn’t make much of an impact in the sort of standard reference works that line the office walls of serious auctioneers and dealers.

DECO continues to be very much the field in favour and, while it is making its presence felt at fairs at all levels, you will be hard-pressed to find a location more in sympathy with the style than Eltham Palace in South London.

FIRST out of the pack of September quality fairs is the oldest, The Chelsea Antiques Fair, which was founded in 1950 and runs again at Chelsea Old Town Hall in the King’s Road, London SW3 from September 17 to 22.

OF all the imminent fairs, the one for which market omens are most favourable is the popular 20/21 British Art Fair, which will take place at the Commonwealth Institute, Kensington High Street, London W8 from September 17 to 21. While the art and antiques industry has been reeling in recent years, one area which has consistently bucked the trend is 20th century British art.

CHISWICK-based dealer in studio pottery, Joanna Bird, presents her seventh annual exhibition at Browse & Darby, 19 Cork Street, London W1, from September 15 to 20, centred on the work of eight leading contemporary potters, Elizabeth Fritsch, Julian Stair, Edward Hughes, William Plumptre, John Spearman, Daniel Fisher, Michael O’ Brien and Danlami Aliyu.

THE Wallace Collection’s exhibition From Palace to Parlour, A Celebration of 19th century British Glass may not shed any new academic light on the subject but it draws attention to a period often ignored by traditional glass collectors: the 19th century. “The 19th century has been completely overlooked,” says independent scholar and glass consultant Martine Newby who curated the exhibition on behalf of the Glass Circle.

While the antiques trade no longer totally shuts down during late July and August it really gets into gear in September, a particularly intensive time for antiques fairs. There are three major fairs in the capital this month, The Chelsea Antiques Fair, The Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair and the 20/21 British Art Fair.

AFTER more than 40 years the Chelsea Antiques Fair is to become an annual rather than bi-annual event. From next year owner Caroline Penman will drop the March staging.

Two leading Kensington Church Street glass dealers are to hold their own selling show, describing it as “a ground-breaking exhibition shining a light on a hitherto unrecognised area of British cut glass”.

Home and Garden: Domestic Spac is the title of a two-part exhibition opening at the Geffrye Museum in Shoreditch, East London from September 16. This exhibition brings together 80 paintings in two groups (Part One: 1730-1830, from September 16 to January 18 2004 and Part Two: 1830-1914, from March 9 to July 18 2004) to explore the representation of urban domestic interiors and gardens in paintings over two and a half centuries.

IT WAS the Sotheby’s sale of July 10 that included the largest and most significant portion of Churchilliana on offer this summer, but it was not the only sale to serve the market, as this report shows.

The market for cricket memorabilia is dominated by Australian and UK collectors who battle every summer for the best entries in London’s major June and July sporting sales. This year Melbourne-based Ludgrove’s (15% buyer’s premium) joined the major houses and held a Literary, Historical and Sporting sale on July 29 at St James DeVere Cavendish Hotel.

It is such an obvious thing to do that it is surprising that there not similar dispersals to that of the Colin Adams collection of English pennies (1797-1970) at Spink (17.65% buyer’s premium) on July 23. It required 375 lots to cover this collection and so we are furnished with a price guide for what is surely a popular if relatively elementary passion.  

AN INTERESTING and historic show is coming up at London’s Plus One Plus Two Galleries, 161-163 Seymour Place, W1, from October 8 to November 1 when Classic Romantic Modern combines work from the 1930s designer Jean-Michel Frank with the accomplished contemporary architectural artist Carl Laubin.

Goldsmiths Hall, the home of the venerable City of London Livery Company, is the venue to check out the latest in contemporary silverware and jewellery next month. Billed as ”the Chelsea Flower Show of the silver and jewellery world” and celebrating its 21st anniversary, the fair will feature 90 exhibitors representing the cream of British talent from these fields with a wide range of work spanning cutting edge to more traditional designs.

The strong collecting base for miniatures has cushioned this market from the wider economic vagaries that have affected other more trade-dependent fields such as furniture and silver. Bonhams Bond Street (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) specialist Emma Rutherford reckoned around 80 per cent of entries sold privately in their 193-lot routine miniature and silhouettes sale back on July 1. “Our buyers tend to be retired and tend to have their money readily accessible,” she said.

Twice a year Russian silver and icons are included in Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) routine miniature and vertu sales and it was the 44-lot Russian silver section that saw some of the most consistent bidding in this 587-lot July 15 outing.