London

UK: ARTS Minister Alan Howarth has become increasingly active in placing temporary bans on the export of works of art

UK: A NEWLY established firm of provincial auctioneers are broadening the scope of their business by launching a two-day ceramics fair in London in June.

In a Bloomsbury Book Auctions sale reported earlier (Antiques Trade Gazette No. 1485, April 21, 2001) I mentioned a bid of £2800 on a 1930 (German text) Cranach Press edition of Hamlet, but at Sotheby’s on April 5, as part of the John Gielgud Collection, a copy of the English text version made very much more than that.

UK: NINETEENTH century genre paintings with strong narrative and moralising elements have not been the strongest performers at auction in recent years.

UK: A CHANNEL Islands collection formed by Sir Martin Le Quesne occupied the first 108 lots of the catalogue issued by Bloomsbury Book Auctions for their March 15 sale.

UK: NOTED for its wide variety of stock, there truly is something for everyone at all prices at the Summer Fine Art and Antiques Fair, which will be held at Olympia in West London from June 7 to 17.

Toy soldiers and figures There was a larger than usual civilian element to the latest sale of toy soldiers and figures, held by Christie’s South Kensington on March 30.

Showing the Terra Nova at Cape Evans, this large, green toned carbon print is an example of the largest format photographs offered by the Fine Art Society in their 1913-14 exhibition of photographs taken by Herbert Ponting on Scott’s last expedition (this one measuring 2ft 6in x 23in – 75 x 58cm) and it sold for £5000 (Grigor Taylor) in the Bonhams Knightsbridge sale.

Timothy Sheldrake’s ... Herbal of Medicinal Plants is often found without a title and with fewer than the 118 plates by C.H. Emmerich after Sheldrake called for, but they have great appeal and the Phillips copy, a first issue of c.1759 with 111 coloured plates, made £5500 at Bonhams.

The Scillies in one of 49 engraved charts from a 1753 first edition of Greenville Collins’ Great-Britain’s Coasting Pilot... which made £4000 at Bonhams.

UK: BY the time you read this, the Kent and Medway Bills should have passed into law, with Royal Assent being given on Tuesday, April 10, although there will be a six-month delay until it can be enforced.

UK: Christie’s are set for a dramatic shake-up of their UK operations with the announcement that they are “exploring a number of options for our future in London including consolidation into a single site”.

UK: FOR some odd reason, the books in the golf memorabilia sale held by Christie’s South Kensington (Buyer’s premium: 17.5/10 per cent) on February 28 were mostly offered as job lots – and it would seem that a number of those lots contained books that should, and in sales past, certainly would have been offered separately.

UK: LEONHARD Fuch’s De Historia Stirpium..., first issued in Basel in 1542, contains over 500 full-page botanical woodcuts, one shown bottom right, but while it is not unusual to find a portrait of the author in any book, this work also contains portraits of the artists, Heinrich Füllmaurer and Albert Meyer, and the man who made the woodblocks from their originals, Veit Rudolphe Speckle.

UK: THE subject matter of the Viking collection sold at Spink on March 14 speaks for itself. Not something to appeal to most Antiques Trade Gazette readers it is worth reporting briefly, mainly to demonstrate the skill that resides in London.

The Bonhams Knightsbridge sale (see above, Henty – the great adventure begins with A Secret for Success) also included a P.G. Wodehouse collection (from a different source) and among the more successful of those lots were these two shown here.

UK: THE Kent and Medway Bills go the House of Lords on Thursday (March 29) for the final reading before Royal Assent puts them on the statute book.

One of eight colour printed and hand-finished plates from the only known copy of a work that Fabien Gautier D’Agoty issued in 1777, apparently as a prospectus for his Histoire naturelle ... Règne Minéral.

UK: WELSH organisers (and occasional ceramics dealers) Robert and Carol Pugh make their debut as the new owners of the Little Chelsea Antiques Fair at Chelsea Old Town Hall, London SW3 on April 2 and 3.

TO commemorate the centenary of Queen Victoria’s death the V&A’s major spring exhibition is Inventing New Britain: The Victorian Vision, from April 5 to July 29. Co-curated by Paul Atterbury, the exhibition takes as its themes how a modern Britain emerged during the Queen’s all-powerful reign, and the way in which the Victorians have shaped our lives. Three books have been published by V&A Publications to accompany the exhibition.