London

HAVING spent millions of pounds revamping their Bond Street flagship saleroom, could Bonhams (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) succeed in attracting the sort of prestigious consignments of Modern and Contemporary art which are going to be the life-blood of any successful international auction house in the early 21st century?

I HAVE been asked to alert readers to the annual Beadwork and Bead Fair – and why not? There are many more arcane items which have societies devoted to them and beads obviously have staying power for the fair has been going for 15 years.

WHILE much of the art dealing world struggles to keep its galleries open, one City-based family firm is actually expanding to two London showcases.

FOLLOWING last year’s inaugural, successful summer show of graduate student’s work, The Metal Gallery at 90 Mount Street, London W1 have declared this an annual event and this year’s selling exhibition, The Graduate 2004, will run from July 21 to September 11.

THE considerable coverage given to Asia Week in London, on these pages and in the national press, rather neglected one gallery which was bringing the art of the Orient to London long before the Asia week promotion was thought of.

THE National Maritime Museum are asking for help in tracking down two missing paintings by William Hodges. The works The Effects of Peace and The Consequences of War were last seen at a European Museum sale at Christie’s in 1813.

COMBINE the perennial appeal of the Fabergé name with the current demand for all things Russian and it has been no surprise to see soaring prices for pieces by this famous firm in recent seasons.

THE Fan Museum in Greenwich, the world’s only museum entirely dedicated to the history of fans and the craft of fan-making, have acquired an important fan painted around 1889 by Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942).

A SMALL group of animal stirrup cups provided the high points at Christie’s South Kensington’s silver sale held on June 16 affirming the evergreen appeal of novelty and collectors items over more useful hollowares.

THE work of the pioneering Victorian designer Christopher Dresser is soon to have a major public airing in an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum opening this September. In the meantime the rarest examples of his iconic designs continue to command high prices in the marketplace.

WHEN does a jumbo tent look sophisticated and soigné? When it houses 77 galleries participating in artLONDON, which took place between June 9-13 at Burton’s Court in Chelsea.

ON July 15, Bonhams will present a double-catalogue sale of 500 lots of natural history books and watercolours from a single collection and one of the highlights will be a very special copy of Audebert & Viellot’s Oiseaux dorés ou a reflets metalliques... of 1800-02.

WAS it a case of not being market-fresh or a change in fashion that resulted in such a dramatic nose-dive in value for this black chalk, stump and watercolour, right, by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), when it came up at Christie’s King Street on June 3? Against hopes of £40,000-60,000 it scraped home with a final bid of £35,000 (£41,825 with premium) from a private collector.

TWO very strong prices, one in Edinburgh and one in London have underlined the status of the Zeigler as the most fashionable of late 19th century carpets. And the £110,000 and £130,000 bid for Zeigler & Co. carpets at Lyon & Turnbull on March 31 (Antiques Trade Gazette 1636, April 24) and Sotheby’s on April 28 (Antiques Trade Gazette 1641, May 29) had one thing in common – both were made with cream grounds.

THE 19th century European Paintings sales at Sotheby’s are divided into a number of regionally-themed sections which are enjoying varying degrees of health. Although they continue to have their occasional moments, the formerly booming markets for Orientalist, German and Scandinavian pictures continue to be pale reflections of their former selves.

BACK in July 1984, Christie’s took £75,000 (£81,000 with premium) for Thomas Rowlandson’s (1756-1827) pièce de résistance watercolour of Box-lobby loungers.

THIS technical marvel of the ancient world, pictured right, known as a Roman glass diatretum or cage cup, was cut out of a single blank of glass to form two layers. The solid inner cup is linked to its outer cage only by a series of delicate struts.

TWENTIETH century and Contemporary art underlined their status as the key growth areas for the major auction houses when London’s June round of Part I Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales netted £120.4m. Six months ago the equivalent sales took £94m, while back in June 2003 – when war was raging in Iraq – they could only muster a relatively modest £81m.

THERE was scarcely a facet of numismatic endeavour which was not represented in Baldwin’s (15% buyer’s premium) sale of May 4 and 5 (2018 lots).

PROFESSOR Edward T. Hall (1924-2001) was a born collector, amassing over a million cigarette cards as a schoolboy at Eton College and later building a celebrated collection of clocks and scientific instruments that was sold at Christie’s King Street last July.